


To Get Lost Is To Learn The Way

by Diamond_Raven



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Healing, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Recovery, Steve Rogers-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-02 19:27:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11515878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diamond_Raven/pseuds/Diamond_Raven
Summary: While waiting for Bucky to get out of cryo, Steve realizes his life has no direction and his depression rapidly worsens. He knows he won’t find happiness or purpose amongst the modern marvels in the Wakandan city, but he thinks he’ll have better luck in a small, rural fishing village on the outskirts of Wakanda.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is a Steve-centric story. Bucky will be in the background until half-way through the story. T'Challa will be a recurring character, and Natasha is a minor character. Sam will be mentioned occasionally.
> 
> 2\. I haven't seen Black Panther so my interpretation of Wakanda is based on research and the Black Panther movie trailer. I’m basing rural Wakandan life on rural life in the Congo Basin Rainforest and my own experience from travelling to developing countries.
> 
> 3\. I want to thank Kawherp, who did such an amazing job betaing this fic!
> 
> 4\. I love comments in any size, shape or form and I love chatting with readers, so it means the world to me if you took the time to write me a comment if you enjoy the story!

When Bucky first goes into cryo, Steve’s completely focused on him. He spends hours in the cryo room, asking the doctors to explain what the various machine displays are showing and wanting to know which results are okay and which ones are cause for alarm.

The doctors are understanding and kind. They remind Steve that all the machines connected to Bucky are highly advanced, and if anything goes wrong, there are multiple systems in place which will keep Bucky safe.

But Steve still feels better watching the monitors with his own two eyes.

After about a week, the medical staff are satisfied that the cryo unit is working as it should and Steve spends more and more time alone in the cryo room.

At first he hadn’t really understood what being in cryo meant. He thought it would be similar to sleeping, so he’d watched Bucky like a hawk, waiting to see him twitch or shift to indicate he was having a bad dream or was in pain or anything else which Steve should be watching for.

But he doesn’t move.

Steve slowly starts understanding what the doctors have been trying to explain to him.

Bucky isn’t in pain. Bucky isn’t having nightmares. He’s not feeling or having anything.

He’s not even sleeping.

His body, his mind, his consciousness have all been…paused.

Steve starts to realize it’s ridiculous to sit here day after day, staring at Bucky.

Bucky isn’t going to suddenly wake up.

Bucky has no idea that Steve is sitting here.

In fact, Bucky would probably be annoyed if he _did_ know that Steve is spending all day sitting here and staring at him.

So Steve spends more time exploring the palace and spending time with his fellow fugitives.

But the more time he spends with them, he more he remembers that their fugitive status is entirely his fault, and that guilt starts overwhelming him. Scott, Clint and Sam miss their families and lives back in the States, and Wanda misses her former life in Eastern Europe.

Steve goes to T’Challa and begs him for one more favor—to help the others regain their freedom.

He’s not sure how T’Challa does it, but Steve’s there to say goodbye to Clint and Scott when they’re free to go back to their families. He says goodbye to Sam when he’s finally cleared to return to the States and get back to his family in DC. Wanda is the last one, and she decides to go back to Eastern Europe instead of the States.

No matter how much they love Wakanda and Steve, they all miss their families and homes more.

That’s probably why Steve doesn’t even have to think it over before turning down all of their invitations to fight for his own freedom and go back to the States.

Steve’s home disappeared seventy years ago, and his only family is in a cryo chamber in Wakanda.

Once Wanda has left, Steve is really on his own.

It doesn’t take him long to feel unhappy.

He knows that’s selfish. T’Challa has given Steve a ridiculously large apartment in the palace—the apartment he and his mother had lived in could fit in the bathroom alone—and he gets new clothes, delicious food, books and movies in English and whatever else he asks for.

But that’s the problem.

He’s clearly a ‘guest of the King’ and thus, the people around here are happy to serve him, but he’s not one of them.

He never will be.

When he goes to one of the enormous pools to swim, if any member of the palace staff are swimming, they’re quick to scamper out when they see him. None of Steve’s reassurances that he’d love to share the pool with them seem to have any effect. Sometimes other members of the royal family, or other guests of the royal family are at the pool, but while they’re polite to Steve, most of their conversations are in Wakandan, and they make no effort to include Steve.

T’Challa is making sure Steve’s physical needs are being met, but there’s nothing he can do to help Steve’s emotional needs.

Steve brings it up to T’Challa only once. The King is extremely busy and Steve only sees him about once a month. Steve thanks T’Challa for his hospitality but he says he misses his friends.

A day later, three English speaking Wakandans show up at Steve’s apartment, explaining that the King had hired them to be Steve’s companions. They are very happy to serve their King, and they’re excited to spend time with one of his honored guests, especially one has lived in America, where their King was educated.

They’re very nice people and Steve has good conversations with them—but he can’t get over the fact that these people are being _paid_ to be his friends.

He knows that’s not something he’ll ever be comfortable with, so he sends a message to T’Challa, thanking him for his efforts but declining any further visits from his ‘companions’.

He starts to feel like a silly child. He’s not incapable of entertaining himself or finding himself things to do. It shouldn’t fall to a busy King to find Steve things he can do during the day.

Maybe if he goes outside of the palace and spends time in Wakandan society, Steve will have better luck.

When he does leave the palace walls, he’s happy to lose the label of being a ‘very important guest’, but instead, he realizes he’s been handed the ‘foreigner’ label. The city is so closed off that foreigners are rare and he stands out no matter where he goes.

Unlike the staff at the royal palace—who are paid to make guests feel welcome—the rest of Wakandan society doesn’t have such obligations. Some people spare him a nice smile, but most people either ignore him, or they think he’s a wealthy man they can take advantage of.

The vendors in the markets are very happy to see him, and they get even happier when Steve buys something from them. He wanders amongst the different stalls and buys trinkets for himself or Bucky, or he buys things which he gives to the palace staff’s children—if they don’t run away from him first.

But that gets out of control quickly. When he buys one thing at a stall, the vendor is quick to shove more items at him until he has no choice but to buy more things. Vendors come over from other stalls, showing him their wares and trying to entice him to come to their stall. Steve starts to realize that their smiles, their excitement, their use of random English phrases isn’t being given to him because they want to form a bond with him. They might not even like him. They just like that he’s buying things from them.

He tests out his theory when he goes to the market for a few days and doesn’t buy anything. Within a few days, those same vendors who used to smile and beckon him over are completely ignoring him.

Steve can understand their attitudes. This is their home, and he’s just a visitor. He’s a stranger who has nothing to do with their lives. He doesn’t speak their language, he doesn’t understand their customs, and they probably think he’s just here to stare at the strange people before he returns to whatever country he calls home. If they can get something useful out of him—like his money—while he’s here, that’s what they’ll do. They think once he goes home, he’ll forget all about them anyway.

They don’t know that Steve doesn’t have any country to call home anymore.

He doesn’t have any place to call home anymore.

The whole thing ends up making him feel lonelier than before, so he stops going through the markets.

But once he loses the distraction of having the market to focus on, he’s left with the rest of the city, which makes things worse.

The city is a weird mix of old and modern. It reminds him of parts of Brooklyn, but the extremes are even more…extreme here.

There are huge glittering skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes, with food vendors selling fruit and meat from their little hand held carts in their shadows. There are bicycles, motorcycles, luxury cars and even flying cars zipping around everywhere. Clothing stores sell all sorts of colorful clothing, which are hand sewn by vendors sitting on rickety chairs right outside their shops—but their cash registers are holographic screens and everybody pays with plastic cards.

It’s confusing and it makes Steve miss his Brooklyn even more.

Not today’s Brooklyn, but the Brooklyn he’d grown up in.

About four months after Bucky goes into cryo, and a month after Wanda leaves, Steve decides he needs to start thinking about the rest of his life.

T’Challa and the doctors have reassured him that Bucky is one of their top priorities and they are exploring all possibilities for removing the triggers safely. There are two important things Steve had to accept: Steve has no medical knowledge and would only slow things down if he tries to insert himself into the research team’s efforts, and finding the right process will take a long time. They want to do it right, which Steve completely agrees with…but that means it’s a slow, thorough process.

He was shocked when T’Challa explains that it might take years to find a method which they’ll feel comfortable using.

…

_Years._

Not having a definite end-point to this whole thing makes Steve’s mental health take a steep dive downwards.

When he’d thought that Bucky would only be in cryo for a few weeks, he could keep his hopes up, plan for the future and look forward to seeing Bucky again.

Now…he realizes he might on his own for years.

…

That’s…very difficult to deal with.

The future is a huge, gaping abyss, with a happily-ever-after with Bucky sitting somewhere on the other side.

Steve has no idea how he’s supposed to fill the years between now and his happily-ever-after.

The only thing he knows with absolute certainty is that he won’t leave Wakanda. He could go to another country that won’t extradite him to the States, but if Wakanda ever decides to completely close their borders, Steve wouldn’t be able to easily get back to Bucky. Not being able to get to Bucky isn’t an option, and Steve doesn’t want to be a ‘special case’ who the King will have to personally take time to deal with in such a situation, so it makes Steve feel better to stay in Wakanda.

That means he has to accept that he’ll spend years living by himself in Wakanda.

That’s…even more difficult to deal with.

He’s getting lonelier and sadder by the day. He has less motivation to exercise and the books and movies in his apartment stop holding his interest. He goes wandering around the palace or outside, but he stops caring that nobody speaks to him.

Some days he doesn’t even leave his apartment. He doesn’t even turn on the television or the computer.

He sits there and does nothing. There are knocks on the door multiple times a day by servants bringing him food, but if they notice that the smile he gives them is strained and doesn’t reach his eyes, they don’t remark on it.

That’s not their job.

He tries to eat, even when his appetite starts decreasing. He knows he’s losing weight, but forcing himself to eat when he isn’t hungry makes him sick.

It’s worst at night. During the day, he’s just numb. But at night, the only thought in his head is that in a few short hours, another day will start, and he’ll have to face the terrible loneliness again. He spends way too many nights crying more than sleeping.

The only benefit of that is he can spend most of the next day sleeping.

He’s tired all the time, and sleeping takes up a huge amount of time, which is great.

On his worst days, he starts thinking that maybe he’ll ask T’Challa to put him into cryo too and to wake him up when they’ve waking Bucky.

But that’s selfish and silly. Not only would it be disrespectful to T’Challa and the rest of Wakanda—but Bucky would be extremely annoyed with him.

Thinking about Bucky always makes his heart ache and makes him cry harder, so he tries not thinking about him. He knows he’s awfully close to doing something stupid like going to the cryo room in the middle of the night and screaming at Bucky to wake up and help him—so he cuts down his visits to just once a week and only goes when he’s feeling okay.

One day he realizes he’s spent almost three days in bed. He’s gotten up to use the bathroom and picked over the food which had been brought in and set up on the table. But the rest of the time, he’s lain in bed, either crying, sleeping, or staring at the wall, alternating between feeling that black sludge sitting in his gut and seeping through his veins, or feeling numb.

He’s watching the staff come in and swap out the almost completely untouched food for new food. Steve can see them from his bedroom whenever they come in.

He wants to scream at them, demand why they don’t care enough to say something when they can see that he’s only nibbled on a bit of fruit and eaten half a bread roll?!

 _“That ain’t their job, pal,”_ Bucky’s voice suddenly says in his head.

Steve blinks. He remembers Bucky saying that.

Steve had been angry at the hospital when he’d seen the outrageous bill they’d charged him during his recent stay. The price of whatever medicine they’d given him had gone way up, and the nurses had refused to give him the old price. They’d explained that the medicine supplier had started charging them more and they had to increase the price. Steve had explained that he couldn’t afford to pay that much, but they’d refused to change the bill. He’d stormed home and ranted and raved to Bucky about it. Bucky had let him yell, then he’d sat Steve down at the table, taken the bill out of his hands and crouched down in front of him.

_“That ain’t their job, pal. It’s up to us to deal with it. And we will. Cause we’re smart and capable and we’ll figure it out. We always do.”_

He _is_ smart and capable, isn’t he?

So why the hell hasn’t he been dealing with the mess that his life had become?

Bucky was right all those years ago, and he’s right now. Steve has been waiting for somebody else to solve his problems for him—but that ain’t their job.

That’s _his_ job.

He’s a smart, capable adult and he’s not moving in a good direction right now.

He needs to change that.

He realizes he needs to get back control of his life. He gave up that control when he’d stepped into that machine that changed Steve Rogers into Captain America. He’s been told where to go, what to do and how to do it for so long that he’s forgotten how to make decisions for himself. He can make decisions for other people, but he’s stopped doing it for himself.

It’s time he started making his own decisions again.

He’s not a child and he doesn’t need—or want—somebody else telling him what to do with the rest of his life.

But coming to that conclusion is much easier than actually doing something about it.

If Bucky were here—well, things would be very different if Bucky were here—but if he could see Steve now, he wouldn’t be too impressed with him.

“Oh, Buck. I’m being a goof. A complete nitwit. Jesus.”

He stares at the rumpled blankets surrounding him. “I gotta get out of bed and do something, Buck. I really do. I’m gonna get control of my life back. Starting now.”

Right now.

Come on, get outta bed, Rogers. He should at least get up and eat breakfast and go for a little run.

But just the thought of getting up and eating, or exercising, or turning on a movie, is all overwhelming.

Plus—he hates the idea of doing all those things alone.

His face crumbles and he’s crying again. “Buck, I don’t think I can do it. It’s too hard.”

He lets himself sink back into his pillows. “I—I miss you so much. I—I miss having friends. I wish Sam had stayed.” Steve wipes his hand over his face, but that doesn’t stem the flood of tears. “I know that’s stupid and selfish of me, and I’ve given the man nothing but grief the entire time I’ve known him. The least I could do was let him go and get back to his life. I wish—I wish we could go back to our old lives, Buck. I wanna go back to the 30s, back to Brooklyn, and I wanna make sure Hitler was never born, and then we’d get to live the lives we deserved,” he chokes out.

He wipes his eyes with the blanket and sniffs hard. He tries to control his crying, until he remembers that nobody will come into his apartment until it’s time for lunch, so he can cry for the next several hours without anybody knowing about it.

That makes him cry harder. “I’m so damn lonely, Buck. I was never good at making friends, you know that. I’m trying my best. I’m being friendly and nobody wants to talk to me. Nobody wants to be my friend. How can I move forward when nobody wants to come with me?”

As soon as he says it, he knows what Bucky would say. He’d tried several times over the years to teach Steve how to be more social. Not only did Steve hate it, but most people made a snap judgement about him based on his appearance, and his lack of social skills always finished off those interactions very quickly.

_“Well, did ya talk to ‘em about something you got in common? You gotta open a conversation, Stevie. Doing the ‘hi’ and ‘how are you’ don’t lead to conversation.”_

Steve sniffs hard and wipes his eyes again. He remembers Bucky used to talk about that a lot.

And it’s a good point.

How can Steve make friends when he doesn’t speak their language?

“I can do that. I can learn Wakandan.”

_“Yeah, you can, pal. Now, get outta bed, clean yourself up, eat something, and start learning. And then come say hi to me.”_

Steve smiles. He likes improvising Bucky’s voice in his head.

He doesn’t know why it’s given him a boost, but it has.

He gets himself and his room cleaned up, carefully puts together a plate of food so he’s getting the right nutrients even if he can only eat a little bit, and then he asks the apartment’s AI to find a Wakandan language learning program.

*             *             *

Learning Wakandan is hard.

Very hard.

Steve is naïve about it at first. He learns how to say a few phrases, and then heads outside to try them on the vendors who sometimes smile at him even when he doesn’t buy anything from them—but as soon as they hear him speak Wakandan, they assume he’s fluent and let loose a stream of Wakandan that Steve has no hope of understanding.

When he tells them he’s just learning—that’s one of the first phrases he’s learned—they try speaking slower, but that doesn’t help either. Some grab their computers or phones and type up what they’re saying, but Steve hasn’t even tried learning to read Wakandan, so that helps even less.

That ends the conversation before it even starts.

When he gets back to the palace, it occurs to him that he should have brought a translation device with him! Jesus, his brain is really not functioning these days.

He borrows a translator device and goes out a few days later to try again.

But that’s frustrating on a whole other level.

Steve has to speak into the device and hand it to the vendor, who has to listen to it say the Wakandan translation of Steve’s words. Then the vendor has to say his response into the device and hand it back to Steve, who can listen to the English translation. It’s slow and frustrating and most of the vendors don’t want to bother with it.

They seem to get annoyed—and a bit judgemental—when they realize Steve can’t speak their language, and some of them seem to view the translator device as an insult.

So, fine. No translator device.

But that leaves him with his little collection of Wakandan phrases. It’s enough for him to bargain while shopping, but those conversations are boring and repetitive—not to mention he again ends up with piles of trinkets he doesn’t need. His little pile of phrases aren’t enough for him to have an actual conversation with somebody.

He realizes it’ll take him months to get fluent enough that he can have a conversation with somebody. Well—he certainly has time to learn, doesn’t he?

But he can’t spend those months sitting in his apartment.

He’s realized that he’s never going to start moving forward again when he has no responsibilities.

Except for visiting Buck, which Steve does once a week—Steve has no other responsibilities. He has no places he needs to be at, nothing he needs to do, no work that needs to be done, no meetings to attend, nothing to plan for.

Maybe that’s the problem.

His entire life, he’s always had a plan, always had a goal.

Sometimes it was something small like: Make 15 cents today so rent can be paid in full tomorrow.

Other times it was something big like: Keep breathing, keep focusing on ma and Bucky’s voices and hopefully he’ll kick the illness before it kicks him.

Other times it was something _really_ big like: Let’s break Sam, Wanda, Clint and Scott out of the Raft.

But for months now, Steve’s had no direction, no goal.

He decides that direction can’t be found in the palace. He knows he could ask T’Challa for a job, but it would probably be a pity-job and everybody around him would know it. He doesn’t want any more special treatment.

He also realizes he won’t find his path forward in the city. The blend of modern and old is too confusing and frightening, and Steve doesn’t feel like taking the time to get used to it.

He asks the AI, and he’s told that people outside of the city still live using the old ways. Hunting, farming, chopping wood by hand, hauling water, sewing clothes by hand.

Those are all things Steve is familiar with. Not the hunting or farming, but doing things with his own two hands is familiar.

Maybe he can get a job helping out a farmer?

The work will be physically hard, keeping his mind and body occupied. He’ll have the job in common with other farm hands, so maybe he can make friends there.

He spends another week researching and trying to come up with a good plan, but he finally decides to just see what falls into his lap.

He waits until his monthly meeting with T’Challa so he can inform him in person. Steve makes it clear that this has nothing to do with the royal family or the hospitality he’s been getting—this has to do with Steve.

T’Challa’s understanding and tells him to let the servants know if he needs helps packing. He’s welcome to take whatever he needs, or he can order supplies if the palace doesn’t have something.

He gives Steve two items.

One of them is a thick necklace made from smooth, white stones. Some of them have symbols carved into them and others have Wakandan writing.

“This necklace declares you as being a friend to the royal family. It will let everybody know to that you are respected by me and that I consider you my friend. It should help if you encounter people who are suspicious of you. Also – if every fifth stone is placed on top of each other—these three; here, here and here—it will active technology inside them. It will automatically send your coordinates and a message requesting help to my personal device. If you are ever in trouble, don’t hesitate to use it.”

Steve takes the necklace and studies it. The stones look like pure white stones. Nothing about the necklace would indicate that it possesses high level technology. “That’s amazing, thank you.”

The second item is a simple leather bracelet with a smooth, black stone. “This is a communication device. You tap it in a specific sequence and it will activate and then we can communicate. It connects to a device I carry on my person at all times, but there will be occasions where I’m unable to answer immediately. My assistants have similar devices and your call will immediately go to their stones if I don’t answer. I will be using the stone to communicate with you if I have to tell you news about Bucky. If I can’t reach you, then I will leave a message on the stone. You will see glowing lights in it and you must tap in a sequence to play the message. Let me show you.”

T’Challa demonstrates both tapping sequences and carefully watches Steve try it. When Steve activates it, he hears a little ping come from T’Challa’s pocket. The King takes out an identical stone from his pocket and activates it. They speak to each other through the stone and Steve learns how to turn the device off and how to retrieve messages.

“Alright, do you have any other questions about the devices?”

Steve takes the bracelet and ties it around his wrist. “No, that’s great. Thank you. This—this means a lot.” His voice sounds a bit rough and he clears his throat to stay focused.

T’Challa’s gesture means more to him than the King probably realizes. This kind man is spending so much time, money and effort to try to give both Steve and Bucky their lives back, despite the fact that they were both strangers to him up until a few months ago.

The fact that T’Challa cares so much for both of them means the world to Steve.

“Both devices are solar powered, so as long as you are out in the sun for a few hours each day, they will remain powered. But whenever you come back to the palace, ask my staff to check them to ensure they’re still working properly. Do you have a plan for when you intend to return to the palace?”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t really know. I think I’ll come see Buck about once a month, but I’m gonna be travelling around for a little while. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to get back.” A thought suddenly occurs to him. “But—you ain’t gonna wake him up without telling me, right?”

T’Challa smiles gently. “Of course not. Unless there is an emergency situation—and even then, we will make every effort to contact you first and we will leave a message if we can’t reach you—but I don’t foresee that happening. If we have a plan to remove the triggers, you will have plenty of time to return before we start.”

*             *             *

Steve spends another few days packing and getting ready. A servant stops by and gives him some final parting gifts from the King.

One of them appears to be white animal teeth. The edges have been smoothly rounded off and there are five of them in a small bag. The servant explains that they’re translation devices. Steve can wear them in his ear, and he’ll automatically hear an English translation of what’s being said.

It’s on the tip of Steve’s tongue to make a joke that it’s too bad that not everybody in Wakanda wears one of these so they can understand Steve as well—but then he realizes what a fool thing that would be to say.

He’s in their country. Why the hell would he expect them to learn his language?

It’s his job to fit in with them, not the other way around.

The servant is still smiling at him and gestures at the other present in Steve’s hand. “His Majesty thought about how to help you speak to others, and he said you would appreciate this gift in its particular form.”

Steve unwraps the present…

…and it’s a dictionary.

A Wakandan-English dictionary.

An actual paper dictionary.

He bursts out laughing as he leafs through it. He can just imagine T’Challa deciding between letting Steve keep the translator gadget he’d been borrowing versus giving him the old paperback copy, and deciding that Steve would appreciate having the paper version.

And he really does.

“Please thank his Majesty for me. All of his presents will come in very handy, I’m sure.”

*             *             *

Now that Steve knows he’s going to be exploring Wakanda on his own, he focuses on learning more Wakandan phrases which might come in handy.

He didn’t need to know how to say ‘I mean no harm’ while shopping in the market by the palace, but he might need to know how to say that if he’s in an environment where foreigners are even less common.

He also figures out how to say ‘King T’Challa is my friend’.

He hopes he won’t have to use these phrases, but it’s better to be prepared.

When he first starts reading the dictionary, he realizes quickly that while the Wakandan language is written using the Latin alphabet he’s familiar with as a base, a lot of the unique sounds in the language are represented using combinations of letters.

Steve has to ask the AI for help in learning how to pronounce some of the letter combinations so he can read his dictionary properly.

The AI helpfully pulls up the entire Wakandan alphabet for him and he and the AI spend several hours going through it letter by letter, Steve trying to pronounce the letter properly and having the AI critique his attempt.

He learns how to pronounce letter combinations like: thsh, nkx and gq.

Once he’s sure that he can read his dictionary properly and he can pronounce the Wakandan words he looks up, he feels he’s ready.

*             *             *

His last stop before leaving is going to see Bucky.

The cryo room is empty, and Steve walks up to the cryo chamber and stares at Bucky.

He looks exactly the same as he had four months ago when he’d gone into cryo.

Steve lays his hands on the glass. He knows Bucky isn’t sleeping, but sometimes he wants to pretend he is.

“I’m gonna go away, Buck. I’m gonna do what you’d tell me to do if you were here. I ain’t gonna keep spinning my wheels in the mud, getting stuck worse. I’m gonna hop out and give my life a good push. I know that’s what you’d want. But I’ll be back, I promise.”

He smiles and taps his finger on the glass, right over Bucky’s nose. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back, you hear?”

He pauses, half hoping that Bucky will crack a smile and say ‘How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you’, but of course, Bucky doesn’t do anything.

He stares at Bucky, feeling that familiar glow of love in his chest.

He doesn’t even remember how old he was the first time he felt it. He must have been about fifteen? He hadn’t known what it meant at the time, but he’d figured out pretty quickly that he didn’t feel that way about anybody else.

He thought over time the feeling would dull and he’d feel that bright glow for somebody else, but every time Bucky smiled at him or hugged him or did one of the million things that showed how much he adored Steve, that glow would grow brighter.

For the millionth time, the thought crosses his mind that he should have at least told Bucky how he felt about him before he’d gone into cryo.

But he dismisses the thought as soon as it comes.

That would have been unbelievably selfish of him. To spring something like that on Bucky when he’s facing going back into cryo! That would have been selfish and very unkind, and that’s the last thing Steve wanted to do.

He knows he could tell Bucky now.

He could tell him how much he loves him. How long he’s been completely and utterly in love with him. How Bucky has always been the center of his universe and the center of his heart.

But that wouldn’t feel right.

Steve was too much of a coward to tell Bucky before the war, during the war, or during their short time together before he went into cryo—and he refuses to become even more of a coward by telling Bucky he loves him right to his face when he can’t hear him.

Instead, he gives Bucky what he hopes is a brave smile. “I’m gonna come visit about once a month, okay? You gotta stay safe and I’ll do the same, and we’ll be together before you know it.”

He hopes the time will fly by for him like it will for Bucky.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve catches a bus that’s heading out of the city. He doesn’t have a destination in mind, but he definitely wants to leave the city.

He gets on at the main station, chooses his seat and keeps his backpack on his lap. The bus is one of the older ones in fleet and it shakes and rattles as it makes its way amongst the brand new skyscrapers and the holographic ad displays. People climb on and off the bus at each stop and everybody’s talking and laughing, children are shrieking, and animals are making all sorts of noises. Some people bring bags, other people are carrying children, and some are carrying animals—some in cages and some are in their laps. Steve’s seat mate changes frequently, and at one point he’s even sitting next to cage full of squawking chickens.

It feels a little overwhelming, until Steve tries pretending that he knows all of these people. That they’re his friends and they’re all going on a trip together. Since he can’t understand a word they’re saying, his fantasy is easier to maintain.

He stays on the bus for more than an hour and eventually they get out of the city and into a more rural area. The quality of the road decreases and eventually the paving stops altogether and they’re traveling on dirt. The bus’ shaking and rattling gets much more pronounced and dust swirls around the bus and seeps in through the open windows. Everybody has to talk much louder to be heard over the noise. Even the animals seem to be squawking and bleating louder.

They get a stop where the driver turns off the engine. He yells something and waves with his hand, and when Steve sees that everybody’s getting off, he takes that as his cue.

He grabs his bag and jumps out of the bus. There’s a public washroom nearby where he relieves himself.

He leans against the washroom building and stares at the crowd walking around him, hauling animals, children and carts laden with fruits, wood and other supplies. Motorcycles, cars and bicycles zip past on the road, stirring up more dust.

Steve notices that most of the crowd is walking in a specific direction, so he decides to join them.

He’s so busy focusing on all the noise and activity happening right under his nose that it doesn’t occur to him to look up until he’s waving away a fly from his face.

That’s when he notices the enormous mountain formation, jutting up into the sky. It’s a beautiful brown rock face with waterfalls streaming down.

He’s heard about this rock. The city is hidden from view by a fake holographic projection of a forest canopy. Anybody approaching Wakanda by air would only see endless miles of forest canopy, broken up by tall brown mountain ranges. The mountain ranges and forests on three sides of the city are purposefully kept dense and steep, making it nearly impossible for people to walk in. Supplies are brought in through heavy guarded underground tunnels, which aren’t pedestrian accessible.

The only accessible walking pathway from the city out to the rest of the country is through this rock formation. He can see the colorful dots representing dozens of people as they make their way up the trail zig-zagging up the mountain face. Half way up the mountain, the colorful dots disappear. Steve knows there’s a tunnel that’s been created for easier access.

People are permitted to freely pass through the tunnel, but if a security risk is detected anywhere in the city or the vibranium mines, the tunnel can be closed off at a moment’s notice.

Steve definitely wants to get to the more rural areas where people are living, so he needs to get through the tunnel.

He keeps following the crowd of people, and eventually, they start walking up the mountain.

There’s a constant chatter of noise around him as they walk along the narrow dirt trail. A mother has two children strapped to her back, she’s carrying a bucket full of supplies in one hand and holding the hand of an older child with her other. There are two women both carrying buckets of supplies balanced on their heads. They aren’t even holding on to them as they walk and gesture with their hands in an animated conversation. A man is leading three goats on rope leashes, and an old man is pushing a cart laden with vegetables.

Steve wants to offer his help, but he realizes he doesn’t know who needs help more—and as he watches all of them, he realizes none of them are really struggling.

They’re all accustomed to doing this walk and there are plenty of people around them who Steve is sure would offer assistance if help was needed.

Steve is very conscious of the ‘foreigner’ label on his head, and the fact that he can’t properly communicate with anybody. He decides it might be mistaken as disrespect if he interferes, so he stays quiet and keeps up with the flow of people.

They climb higher, following the trail as it winds back and forth.

Eventually, they’re at the mouth of the tunnel. There are torches stuck in the tunnel walls providing light for the long walk through what would otherwise be complete darkness.

It’s wide enough for three people to walk comfortably beside each other, and Steve is one of the tallest people in this crowd, and he’s still got room to spare above his head.

Steve gets out of the tunnel and heads down the narrow trail to the bottom of the mountain.

The crowd separates a bit as people move off in different directions on various dirt trails that lead through the forest.

That’s when Steve stops and looks around. He realizes the sun is going to set in a few hours and he needs to find some place to set up camp for the night.

He follows along with the larger crowd until they come to a bus stop. There’s a waiting bus and everybody piles on. Steve manages to grab a seat near the front and keeps an eye on his surroundings.

The bus rattles along the dirt road, stirring up dust. Mostly Steve just sees the forest, but occasionally there are a cluster of brick houses and a pole stuck on the side of the road, which is where the bus pulls over and lets some people out.

He’s in a very rural area. He knows the people living out here are the farmers, fishermen and hunters who live the way Wakandans have lived for thousands of years. Anybody coming to Wakanda would only be able to easily access this part of it—which is how Wakanda maintains its reputation as a developing country, not a highly advanced society.

This is the kind of atmosphere Steve thinks will help him get back his life back on track. This is the kind of lifestyle he can understand—not living in a glittering palace, or working in a skyscraper.

All of the little villages seem the same and there’s absolutely no reason that Steve picks a particular stop to get out at.

He just does it.

He wants to find a quiet place where he can set up camp and maybe stay for a day or two.

He deliberately walks away from village where the bus had stopped. He doesn’t want to trespass on anybody’s property, especially if he can’t communicate with anybody.

He walks down the road for a while until he decides he’s had enough of the dust and he steps into the forest. He wades through the thick green undergrowth, stumbling over roots and ducking under low lying branches. The forest is very thick in these parts, and he’s about to head back onto the road, when the forest starts to thin out.

The undergrowth seems to disappear quite abruptly from one area to the next, while the large trees remain, making a shady, thick canopy.

He hears the sound of running water, and when he walks a bit more, he finds a river. It’s about half a mile wide and the water is beautifully clear.

But he’d learned in the army to never trust how clear water looks. Lots of things can be in the water that are undetectable to the human eye. He’d packed some water filters, so he should be fine.

He picks a large tree close to the river bank and starts setting up camp.

It’s a weird feeling doing it without Bucky.

The only time he and Bucky—both city boys through and through—had ever had to set up camp was during training and occasionally during the war.

Steve had learned how to do it in basic training, but he’d been so exhausted during basic that he barely remembers anything from that time period.

He _does_ remember being somewhere in Italy with the rest of the Howling Commandos, setting up camp in a forest. It had been pouring rain, freezing cold and it was already dark.

Nobody had any luck getting a fire going, so they’d struggled to get their tents up with the wind and rain howling around them.

He and Bucky had been working on their tent, when they both decided to let go of the canvas to stretch their backs out. Unfortunately, both of them had assumed the other would still be holding the canvas, so they’d both just stood there, staring like idiots as the canvas flew away from them and smacked up against a big tree.

They’d both stared at the canvas, and then stared at each other. They’d been soaking wet, covered in mud and exhausted, but they’d both lasted two seconds before they’d burst out laughing.

It had taken them twice as long to put up the tent as it should have because they were laughing so much.

Steve smiles as he works on putting up his tent. “I wish you were here, Buck.”

He makes a small fire and goes to the river to get some water. He filters it, heats some soup and grills sausages for dinner.

He finds a nice stump to sit on and stares at the river while he eats.

Even though he should be feeling even lonelier than he had in the palace, he doesn’t. Doing work with his own two hands keeps him busy and gives him a sense of accomplishment.

He washes the dust off himself in the river and lies on the river bank, staring up at the sky as the sun sets. Once the sun’s set, he banks the fire and gets ready for bed. He has a small gun which T’Challa had given him and it rests beside his pillow.

Before he lies down, he digs in his pillow and pulls out the little picture frame he’s got hidden in there. It used to be a pocket watch he’d found at a thrift store in Manhattan when he’d come out of the ice. Somebody had removed the watch face and the watch mechanism, so now it’s just a large locket.

Steve had kept it for nostalgic reasons and it’s one of the only things he’d managed to bring from the States before he’d left to find Bucky.

Once he’d come to Wakanda and Bucky had gone into cryo, Steve was finally free to put whatever he wanted into the locket without having to answer questions he wasn’t comfortable with.

He’d known immediately that he wanted to put a photo of Bucky in there. He didn’t want a picture of Bucky from the war and those were the only photos he could find on the internet, so he’d sketched Bucky from his memories; hair an organized disaster, wearing his favourite suspenders, eyes sparkling and that amazing smile on his face.

He presses the button and the lid pops off the watch. He smiles at Bucky, who smiles back at him.

Whenever he looks at the picture, he gets that pang of regret running through him that he’d never told Bucky how he feels about him.

Steve had wasted so much time. So. Much. Time!

Since he’d figured out how he felt about Bucky, he’d had millions of opportunities to bring it up. He’d spent almost every single day with Bucky before the war. When his ma had passed away and Bucky and him had found a place together, the only days they didn’t see each other were ones when Steve was in the hospital under quarantine or Bucky went back to his parents’ to help take care of his sisters if they got sick.

Then during the war when they had spent months sharing a tent in the middle of nowhere, Steve had even more reason to tell him. Death was literally staring them in the face every single day…

…yet cowardice had kept Steve tongue tied.

And living with that regret every day is the price he has to pay for that cowardice.

And then he thought he’d lost Bucky forever and the regret grew into something dark and heavy that threatened to drag Steve under completely.

Then somebody somewhere finally decided to cut him a break and gave Bucky back to him.

And Steve is determined not to waste this second chance.

Hopefully when Bucky comes out of cryo and gets back on his feet, Steve will finally be brave enough to tell him. Even if Bucky doesn’t feel the same way, by now, it’s more important for Steve just to tell him. For Bucky to know how much he means to Steve.

But that will have to wait until T’Challa and the doctors can remove the triggers.

Until then, he’ll practice telling the Bucky in his pocket watch.

“I love you, Buck.” It feels weird to say it out loud. Hopefully with practice it’ll get easier. He wants it to sound natural when he finally tells Bucky.

“I love you very much. Sleep well.” He kisses the rim of the watch, shares one more smile with Bucky, then snaps the watch lid closed.

He sleeps better than he has in months.

He spends the next day exploring his surroundings. He has enough food for a few days, so he has time before he has to head to a nearby village or back to the city to buy more food.

He keeps himself busy chopping firewood, washing his dishes and clothes, wandering around, talking to Bucky and reading the dictionary T’Challa had given him.

Everything is fine until he wakes up on his third morning.

It’s the first morning he’s not woken by the chirping of birds.

He’s woken by an angry human yelling in Wakandan.

*             *             *

There’s angry yelling and his tent is being shaken. Steve’s heart leaps into his throat and he automatically grabs for the gun.

He lies there, still trying to wake up and trying to decide what the hell he should do.

Well, he should definitely get out of his tent so he knows how many people he’s dealing with.

The yelling and shaking is getting more aggressive.

“I’m coming out! I don’t mean anybody any harm!” Steve realizes he’s got his gun in his hand and makes the snap decision to drop it and leave it in the tent. He has no desire to get into a shoot-out with anybody.

He unzips the tent flap and slowly shuffles out, trying to keep his hands in view and not fall flat on his face.

As soon as he’s half way out of the tent, he feels something sharp being jabbed into his side, and he’s falling flat on his face anyway.

He stays where he is, keeping his hands up and trying to blink the dust out of his eyes. “I’m unarmed!”

He can see a ring of feet around him, some of them wearing sandals, others bare foot. He counts about ten pairs of feet.

The angry yelling is now coming from multiple voices, and he feels sharp jabs coming from all sides. He can’t see what they’re poking him with, but he hopes they won’t draw blood. He doesn’t need to deal with open wounds on top of everything else.

“I don’t mean you any harm! I don’t have any weapons!”

More angry yelling.

That’s when he realizes two things: he isn’t wearing T’Challa’s translation device—all the little teeth things are deep in his backpack, in the tent—and he’s been yelling in English.

He knows how to say ‘I mean no harm’ in Wakandan, so he tries saying that.

The jabbing and yelling don’t get any better. Steve has no idea if they’re going to start beating him to death, or if they’re gonna keep poking him until they get bored.

When he feels the stones on his necklace digging into his chest, he remembers that does have two of T’Challa’s presents on him.

He won’t be able to activate either the communication stone, or the tracking function in the necklace from his current position, but maybe the necklace will work in other ways.

He slowly rolls to his back, gritting his teeth when he starts getting jabbed in more sensitive areas. He knows he’s taking a stupid risk exposing his front like this, but he decides to try it. He reaches under his shirt and pulls out the stone necklace.

He uses one of the other Wakandan phrases he knows. “King T’Challa is my friend.”

He holds the necklace up from his chest and turns it so the crowd can see it.

Now that he’s facing up, he can get a better look at his attackers.

They appear to be a group of villagers. There are women, men and teenage children. None of them are wearing official uniforms, and the weapons they’re using to poke Steve appear to be spears. Some of them have large knives and axes, but thankfully nobody’s poking him with those.

The angry yelling gradually dies down as everybody inspects the necklace.

An old man squints down at the stones, then reaches out a hand and yells something in Wakandan. Steve recognizes his voice as the man who’d woken him up. He must be one of the village leaders.

The man is gesturing with his hand, so Steve pulls the necklace off his neck and hands it over. Fighting them at this point would be stupid. He doesn’t want to hurt these people unless his life is threatened. And while he’s in a sticky situation, he thinks he still has the opportunity to solve this with communication rather than with violence.

Damn, he wishes he was wearing one of the translation devices!

The older man is carefully examining the stones. The others around him crane their necks, trying to read the symbols and inscriptions too. There’s some discussion and some pointing. Most of them seem to be asking questions, probably wondering if the necklace is fake, but the older man keeps shaking his head and responding in the type of voice somebody uses when they’re talking to somebody they think is stupid. He gestures with the necklace and points down at Steve from time to time.

The discussions change in tone—some people sound calmer, some still sound angry, but Steve thinks his fate probably lies in the hands of the old man.

The man looks down at Steve and glares at him suspiciously. He barks something at Steve.

Steve repeats his phrases in Wakandan: “I mean no harm. King T’Challa is my friend.”

He thinks of another one he’s learned. “I’m travelling.”

The man asks more questions, but when his only response is Steve’s blank stare, he sighs loudly and points at Steve’s tent. Then he points at Steve, glares, says two words and makes a waving motion with his hand towards the road.

He wants the tent and Steve gone.

Sooner rather than later.

Steve’s nodding. That’s a good plan. He can do that. He can absolutely do that. He says “Yes, yes” in Wakandan.

The man glares down at him suspiciously, then he gestures for everybody to stand back.

As soon as the pointy weapons and people step back, Steve slowly gets to his feet.

He begins breaking down camp as fast as possible, while trying to put the campsite back to its natural state. He’s never had such a big audience while putting away his tent and his hands get clumsy and he ends up having to pull the whole thing out and refold it when it doesn’t want to fit into the bag. While he’s packing his bag, he takes a second to dig out one of the translation teeth things and jams it into his ear.

It’s actually surprisingly comfortable and it fits nicely.

He has no idea if it’s working because everybody’s busy watching him work and nobody’s talking.

Steve is at odds over what to do with his stack of freshly cut firewood. He doesn’t want to just leave it there, but carrying it with him is silly.

He turns to the old man and gestures at the pile of wood, then points at the old man.

The man glares at him and says something in Wakandan.

There’s a second of delay, and then a calm, male voice says: “What are you saying?” into his ear.

He’s used to living with ear pieces, but this is a bit strange.

Steve pulls his dictionary out of his bag, looks up the word ‘gift’ and tells the man the Wakandan equivalent.

The man repeats the word back to him, but he uses that tone from before which makes Steve feel like a stupid child.

“Gift?” The calm man says in Steve’s ear.

“Yes,” Steve says in Wakandan.

The man shakes his head and says a long sentence in Wakandan.

“I don’t accept gifts from strangers, foreigner.”

Steve sighs. “Okay, fine. Leave it there then.” He make a dismissive gesture at the pile of wood and turns to zip up his bag.

One of the women in the crowd speaks up.

The male voice in his ear translates a second later: “I’ll take the wood, foreigner. What do you want in exchange?”

Steve turns to her. Normally he’d argue that he doesn’t need anything, but he’s starting to see that these people don’t see this situation the way he does.

He remembers hearing Bucky making deals with people whenever they were in desperate need for something but didn’t have the money or the access to get it. Steve was a terrible negotiator but Bucky was a pro.

Bucky hated giving ‘future favors’ as an exchange. He didn’t like being in people’s debt—not because of pride, but because it was a dangerous spot to be in. It wasn’t unheard of for people to use such promises to get outrageous favors such as giving up a job or a full month’s rent.

_“You either do a straight swap, or nothing. That’s how it’s gotta be, Stevie. That’s the safest.”_

Steve thinks it over. He’s running low on food. He looks up the word ‘food’ in the dictionary and says the word once he finds it.

The woman nods. “Okay. You’ll bring the wood to my house and I’ll give you food. Then you’ll get off our land.”

Steve immediately feels bad. He hadn’t realized he was trespassing. But this would explain the sudden lack of undergrowth in this area. It had probably been cleared by the villagers.

Damn. He needs to pay more attention.

He says: “Yes” and swings his bag over his back. He steps up to the older man, who’s still holding his necklace. Steve makes a hand gesture. “I’d like that back, please.” He says the word ‘please’ in Wakandan.

The man hands it back to him. Once Steve has the necklace around his neck and under his shirt again, he picks up the bundle of firewood.

Now that the excitement is done, most of the crowd disperses to go their separate ways.

A small group remains and the old man gestures for Steve to follow them. They’ve all lowered their weapons and they walk through the forest without anybody keeping too close of an eye on Steve. They seem to have accepted that he’s merely a silly foreigner who wandered onto their property because he’s stupid, but he’s no threat.

Thank goodness for the necklace. Plus, he thinks it was a good decision to keep his gun out of things.

It’s hidden at the bottom of his bag and Steve’s hoping he won’t need it.

If he never has to touch a gun for the rest of his life, he’ll be a very happy man.

They walk until they reach the village where the bus had dropped Steve off a few days ago. The village is composed of about two dozen brick houses, and the woman who he’d spoken with leads him on a short walk to a house by the river bank.

She pushes open the wooden door and gestures for him to add the firewood to a pile she’s got just inside her door. Steve carefully places his bundle on top, then he steps back outside.

He watches her rummage around in her kitchen area, digging through baskets and woven bags. She keeps looking at the firewood with a critical eye, as if she’s mentally calculating what to give in exchange.

She finally comes to the door, a small clay bowl filled with flour in one hand, and two greenish purple fruits in her other hand. Steve recognizes the fruit—he’s eaten it for breakfast at the palace multiple times.

But those fruits had been twice as big as each of these. These two are shrivelled up and obviously not the best of the bunch.

Steve knows he’s being ripped off.

He pulls out his dictionary, finds the word for ‘good’ and then points at the fruits and says ‘no’ and ‘good’.

A flicker of surprise crosses the woman’s face, but then she’s impassive again. She says something in Wakandan and the translation device kicks on again. “These are very good. They’re very high quality.”

That makes Steve laugh. He shakes his head and repeats ‘no’ and ‘good’.

The woman jerks her chin up, the universal sign that she’s going to be sticking to her guns, so Steve shrugs and motions for her to step aside so he can take back his wood.

If she wants to play chicken, he can do it too.

He’s got nothing else planned for the day anyway.

She looks a bit shocked at the turn of events, then she makes an annoyed clucking sound. “Okay, fine. What do you want for the wood?”

Steve gestures at the bowl of flour and then looks up the word ‘meat’.

Her eyes narrow when he tells her what he wants. “No part of any animal is worth that amount of wood.”

Fine. Steve points at himself, points at a nearby tree and mimes the act of chopping.

“You’ll cut more wood to get meat?”

Steve nods. “Yes.”

She thinks it over before finally nodding. “Come. I’ll show you what I want you to chop.” She steps out of the house, leans the door shut behind her and walks down the dirt path winding through the small village.

She brings him to an enormous log that’s lying elevated on some stumps which have deep Vs cut into them to keep the log stable. Steve can tell the stumps had been placed there on purpose, and a group of very talented people had brought the tree down in exactly the right way to make it land on the stumps. Keeping it elevated keeps it away from most bugs and allows it to dry if it rains. It would take a group of men, women and children about a week to chop up a log this size.

Steve knows exactly what’s about to come.

He frowns at the log, makes a big show of rubbing his chin and tries to think what Bucky would try to negotiate. How much meat would chopping this log get us, Buck?

_“When in doubt, always start high. You’re always gonna go lower during the bargaining, and if you start too low, you’re gonna end up giving up somethin’ for nothin’.”_

Right.

He turns to the woman. He pulls out his dictionary and looks up the words ‘whole’ and ‘animal’. He gestures at the entire log and says the Wakandan words. Then he gestures at half the log and mimes what he hopes represents half an animal.

A small crowd has gathered, watching and listening to the back and forth.

Steve can see a smile tugging on the woman’s lips. “If you chop up this whole log into nice size pieces before the sun is down, we’ll give you a whole crocodile. If you only do half of it, you’ll get half of it. If you do less than that, you’ll get nothing but the flour. Take it or leave it, foreigner.”

Steve momentarily cringes—he’d been wading around in the river for days without any idea that there are crocodiles in the water—but then he considers her suggestion.

Steve will take it. He won’t be able to deal with an entire crocodile, but he knows he can use it to bargain for other things. Maybe a chance to spend the night in the village without being woken by spears?

Steve nods and says “Yes”. He takes off his backpack, takes out his bottle of water and his ax, and leans against the log while he sharpens the ax.

The translation device is busy chattering in his ear as he gets ready, people telling each other to drop whatever they’re doing and come see the stupid foreigner make an idiot out of himself.

Oh, they’re about to get a surprise.

He walks around the log a few times, making a plan in his head. He knows he’ll be able to do it, but it’ll definitely be stretching his physical limits. Plus, he hasn’t been exercising and eating as he should for the last few months.

_Buck, you better be sending me positive thoughts. And you, ma, you better be putting in a good word for me up there._

He does a few stretches, checks his ax, and off he goes.

He gets into the rhythm quickly. He chops off a large piece of wood and gradually cuts it into smaller and smaller pieces. When he thinks they’re okay, he’ll hold up a piece for the crowd, who will nod or shake their heads with approval—mostly approval because Steve knows firewood—and he’ll start on a new piece.

Children are sent over to collect the cut pieces, and Steve only stops to stretch, drink some water or sharpen and tighten his ax.

After a few hours, he really needs to pee, so he stops and asks one of the kids who’s collecting firewood where the washroom is. That’s one of the first phrases he’d learned.

The kid points and a small girl runs up to him, grabs his hand and starts pulling it, telling him she’ll show him.

The woman who he’d negotiated with—who’s been sitting in the shade, munching on a piece of bread while watching his progress—reminds him he only has until sundown.

Steve laughs and looks up how to say ‘don’t worry’ before he follows the girl.

The bathroom is an outhouse exactly like the kind he’d used for most of his life. The girl patiently waits right outside the door until he’s done and then leads him back to the log.

The crowd disperses after a while and even his negotiator comes and goes to tend to things.

When his water bottle finally runs dry, Steve grabs it and goes to get his filter from his bag. Before he can even start heading to the river, two older boys show up, lugging a pot of water.

One of the boys reaches for Steve’s water bottle. “We’ll fill it for you.”

Steve hesitates. He knows he might get sick from drinking unfiltered water—but he knows eventually he’ll get used to it. He doesn’t want to depend on the filters for however long he’s out here.

He takes the bottle back when the boys have filled it, drains it and gives it back to the boys to refill.

If he does get sick, hopefully it won’t happen until after he’s done chopping.

Steve does start getting tired way earlier than he thought he would. He deliberately changes his pace, alternating between working on larger pieces and smaller pieces as his muscles try to keep up from the punishing pace.

The day is hot and even though he’s under the canopy, sweat is dripping off him. His drinking water bucket is replaced whenever he needs it, and some little kids are holding large leaves that they use to fan him as he works. It’s a nice gesture, but the kids are too small to move the leaves well.

He’s only three-quarters done with the log when he notices that he’s moving much slower than before, he can’t catch his breath properly and he’s spending way too much time looking at the sun through the trees. The trees around him are starting to sway.

Or maybe he’s the one swaying?

Or is it his vision?

He’s feeling dizzy and he can barely focus on the log anymore.

When it takes him five tries to loosen the ax from the log, the woman steps out of the crowd. “Alright, you’re done, foreigner.”

Steve struggles to catch his breath. He feels like he’s having an asthma attack.

It’s probably the heat.

And the fact that he bit off way more than he can chew.

“I—I can keep going. Just gimme a sec.” He gasps out, forgetting that she can’t understand him.

She comes up to him and gives him a little push. Steve is so exhausted that he falls over, landing on his ass in the dirt as if she’d punched him.

She fills his water bottle and hands it to him, then grabs the bucket of water and dumps the rest of it over his head. She gestures at the kids. “Get something to cool him with. Once he’s had enough water, we’ll bring him down to the river.”

Older kids join the young ones around him and help fan him with big leaves. More water is brought from the river and dumped straight over his head. It’s cool and fresh and Steve thinks he can feel the steam sizzling off his skin. That’s a lie of course, but the thought helps cool him down. The combination of the cold water and the fanning helps a lot.

The dizziness starts to fade and the trembling in his arms eventually stops. Now he just really wants to sit in the cool river for a while, crocodiles or not.

He looks up at the crowd and gestures down to the river. “Anybody wanna help me down to the river?”

Some men step forward and haul him to his feet and help him walk down to the river. They leave him to sit on the edge of the river, swirling his legs in the cool water and scooping water over his head.

When Steve looks around, he notices several of the older kids have stepped into the river around him and they’re holding spears in their hands. Whether they’re fishing or protecting him from predators, Steve appreciates having them there.

The sun is starting to set, lighting up the sky above the trees in bright orange and reds. It’s beautiful.

He finally feels strong enough to climb to his feet.

That’s when the reality of the situation comes back to him.

He’s just made an idiot out of himself in front of everybody—and he’s not going to get his whole crocodile.

He’ll still get half a crocodile, but he’s definitely embarrassed himself. Stupid foreigner indeed.

He walks back up the bank and goes to find his backpack. The rest of the crowd who had been watching him is busy collecting the firewood he had chopped up, and using their own axes to chop up the large pieces he’d left behind.

Steve puts away his water bottle and ax, then looks around for the woman. She’s walking towards him, bringing the bowl of flour.

He frowns. “Where’s my crocodile? I thought we had a deal.”

She smiles, apparently knowing what he’s saying. “The men will catch your crocodile tomorrow, foreigner. For today, you get the flour.”

Tomorrow?

That reminds Steve—he needs a place to sleep. He doesn’t want to trespass again, but he’s too exhausted to walk far from the village.

He looks up the words he needs in the dictionary and tries piecing them together. “I need sleep. I sleep here?”

She narrows her eyes. “One night?”

“Yes.”

“I have to speak to the village council.” She hands him the bowl of flour and walks away. Steve figures she hadn’t gifted him the bowl, so he digs in his bag for a plastic bag he can put the flour into. His stomach is growling and he’s really looking forward to dinner, but first he has to find out where he’s going to be allowed to prepare dinner.

She comes back a few minutes later with the old man who had woken Steve up that morning. Steve struggles to his feet. Exhausted or not, he knows it’s rude to stay sitting when speaking to somebody in a position of authority.

He’s glaring at Steve suspiciously. “You want to put your tent into the village?”

“Yes. One night.”

“Alright. You can use the facilities, but don’t touch anything else unless given permission. Urbi—” he gestures the woman forward. “Show him where to put his tent.”

Steve assumes the translation device was referring to the outhouse when it had said ‘facilities’. Steve nods, says “Yes” and then follows the woman—Urbi—to a spot where she tells him he can set up his tent.

It’s close enough to her home that she can watch what Steve does, and that’s exactly what she does.

She sits on her front stoop, munching on pieces of fruit and meat on a skewer, and watches Steve.

He sets up his tent and then calls over to her, asking her in broken Wakandan if Steve can exchange some of his future crocodile for some firewood. He’s too tired to chop more.

Urbi smirks and nods, gesturing for him to come get it himself.

He grabs some of the wood from the pile—which is the wood he’d cut himself yesterday, bringing this whole day full circle—and he goes to make his fire and cook his last sausages.

He takes out a pan and carefully mixes some water with half of the flour she’d given him. He has some salt, which is good but he’s wishing he had some berries. Maybe tomorrow he’ll ask somebody to teach him how to identify edible berries and he’ll add those to his bread.

He can’t count how many times his ma had made him flatbread just like this when they hadn’t been able to buy bread or any other ingredients.

He mixes the flour and water until it becomes a dough, kneads it, then flattens it in his pan and bakes it over the fire.

When it’s done, he wraps it around his sausages, and it’s a pretty good dinner.

He looks up and notices Urbi sitting in her doorway, watching him. He raises his hot dog at her and she smiles and raises the piece of fruit in her hand in reply.

He cleans up his dinner, washes his dishes and himself in the river and prepares for bed.

It’s strange being in his tent and hearing the chattering voices around him. He can understand what they’re saying, but the translation device doesn’t just translate one voice—it tries to translate everything it can hear, so Steve gets a mish-mash of words and phrases which he can’t separate.

But he’s tired enough that it doesn’t matter.

As he’s changing his clothes, he hears a pinging noise. The sound of technology sounds so out of place that for a second he doesn’t know what’s making the sound, until he realizes it’s the communication stone on his wrist.

He sits on his sleeping bag and activates the stone. He raises his wrist to his mouth. “Hello?”

“Steve?”

He recognizes T’Challa’s voice right away. A smile spreads over his face. “Your Majesty! This is a surprise.” But his happiness immediately turns to dread. “Is—is Bucky okay?”

“He’s fine. Absolutely fine. No big developments yet, but he’s fine. I wanted to check in with you and make sure you’re okay.”

Steve nods. “I’m fine, thank you. I’m in a village outside of the rock.”

“Oh? So you are in more comfortable surroundings?”

Nothing about this village is comfortable right now, but he knows what T’Challa’s trying to say. “It’s better than the city was, that’s for sure. No offense.”

T’Challa laughs. “I will never be offended by you telling me your honest opinions, Steve. Are they treating you well? The villagers?”

“So far, yes. I accidentally trespassed on their land when I set up camp, but we worked it out.”

“They are treating you fairly?”

“They’ve kept all the agreements they’ve made so far. They seem like good people.”

“How long will they allow you to stay?”

Steve shrugs. “I have no idea.”

T’Challa makes an affirmative noise. “Let me know if you need me to remind them that you are a friend to me.”

Steve chuckles. “Thank you, T’Challa, but I’d rather try to get by on my own.”

“That’s fine, but just know that you don’t have to if you no longer want to.”

Steve’s breath catches in his throat. He remembers another conversation with another friend, who had said the same thing.

But unlike T’Challa, Bucky hadn’t accepted Steve’s refusal.

Steve’s glad that T’Challa isn’t as overly protective of Steve as Bucky is. He really does want to do this on his own.

He and T’Challa chat a little more, but when Steve gets too tired to follow the conversation properly, he bids him good night with a promise to keep in touch with him at least once a week. Once he’s turned off the stone, he barely has enough energy to get into his sleeping bag.

He does have enough energy to do his nightly ritual.

He digs the pocket watch out of his pillow case and pops open the lid.

As soon as he sees Bucky smiling at him, he can’t help but smile back.

“I hope you had a comfortable day, Buck,” he says. It’s a stupid thing to say, but there are a limited number of positive things that can be said to a man who’s cryogenically frozen in a lab. “Tomorrow I’m gonna get half a crocodile and we’ll see what I can do with that.”

He kisses the rim of the watch. “I love you. Have a good night.”


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Urbi introduces Steve to her husband, Akanni, who will be going up the river to hunt crocodiles, including Steve’s.

Steve asks her if he can exchange the future crocodile for other things. She doesn’t understand what he’s saying, so it takes a lot of miming and searching through his dictionary until he can explain.

He can’t eat half a crocodile by himself before it goes bad, but he needs other things. He wants to spend a few more days in the village, he wants permission to cut more of the log to use for his own firewood, and he wants somebody to show him how to identify edible fruits and plants.

She frowns at him. “Why are you here, foreigner? Why don’t you go home? Take the crocodile home with you. Show your white friends what you won.”

Steve can’t possibly explain that his closest friend is currently cryogenically frozen in his Majesty’s palace and that’s why he can’t leave Wakanda, so he does the next best thing.

He tells her he doesn’t have a home.

That’s true enough.

Urbi stares at him for a long time until she finally sighs. “You have to speak to village council about this. We don’t allow strangers to stay in the village.”

She takes him to village council. It turns out they don’t meet in a designated building. Village council meets wherever the members of council happen to be sitting at the time. Right now, they’re eating breakfast down by the river, sitting on the river bank.

Village council is mainly composed of old men and women. The man sitting in the middle is Steve’s old friend.

Steve learns his name is Obasi, and he’s the man who Steve has to impress if he wants to stay. Steve doesn’t really know why he wants to stay in this particular village, but the thought of walking around aimlessly, moving camp every night is unappealing. Plus, he has no desire to be woken up by angry yelling and spear poking again.

Thankfully Urbi tells council what Steve had already told her so he doesn’t have to stumble through his explanation a second time.

A council member starts loudly talking about whether Steve is a threat or just stupid, when Obasi gestures for him to be quiet.

He turns to Steve and gestures at his ear. “Take out the translator.”

Steve blinks at him. He had no idea they knew about the translator. They must have realized he could understand what they were saying, but he’d made the assumption that they weren’t familiar with such technology.

He realizes he needs to stop making assumptions if he wants to stay on people’s good side.

He takes out the translation tooth and hands it to Obasi.

Council proceeds to have a loud, animated discussion, with lots of gesturing at Steve and lots of hand waving and unimpressed facial expressions.

At one point, Urbi steps in and motions Steve forward. She grabs Steve’s wrist and lifts his arm up. Steve lets her do it, but when she sighs, rolls her eyes and flexes her arms, he understands. He dutifully flexes his arms. Urbi gestures at Steve while she explains something to the others.

Finally, Obasi hands the translation device back to Steve. He puts it back into his ear.

“Urbi says you have nowhere to go. Is that true?”

Steve nods. Technically he _can_ go anywhere in Wakanda he wants, but he has no home. “Yes. No home.”

“You’re a strong man so we’ll let you stay as long as you help the village and stay true to your promises and agreements.”

Steve nods eagerly. “Yes.”

Having finished dealing with this issue, Obasi turns back to the river and leans over to wash his feet.

Steve stands there until Urbi walks away, then he follows her.

She looks over her shoulder at him. “You’ll have to work hard if you want to stay, foreigner. Be respectful, and always obey village council. It’s best if you stay quiet unless somebody asks you something.”

Steve nods. Those are all things he can do.

*             *             *

Akanni and the other hunters bring back a crocodile that evening, and as promised, Steve is handed half of it.

He cuts off a large piece and hands the rest back to Akanni, explaining in broken Wakandan that he had already negotiated with Urbi to exchange the rest for other things.

It takes several weeks until Steve stops being the strange circus act who’s landed in these people’s village.

The first week is embarrassing. Steve doesn’t know what he’s doing, and as he’d predicted, he gets sick from drinking the river water. He spends a day hovering around the outhouse, sometimes only staying outside long enough to get some fresh air before going back in. He’s shaking with a fever and feeling miserable. By evening, Urbi thankfully takes pity on him and brings him some tea to drink, which helps sooth his stomach and nausea. She gives him some leaves to chew on, which helps with his bathroom problems.

She reassures him he’ll get used to the water eventually.

And he does. Once his body learns to fight the bacteria in the water, he gets accustomed to it. The serum probably has a lot to do with it. Within a week, he only has occasional bathroom problems and he can focus on actually being part of village life.

He gains their respect by following Urbi’s suggestions. He learns how to say ‘do you need any help?’ and how to trade for things. He wanders around the village, watching how people do things, or stepping in to help if it’s a task he can handle. There is no shortage of work that needs to be done every single day, so he has plenty of opportunity to help. He always asks for food or lessons in exchange.

Most of the men in the village are fishermen. They head out at dawn in narrow little boats and paddle up the river to the good fishing spots. They throw out nets or use spears to catch fish and other water creatures. Crocodiles are plentiful in the water, but they’re very difficult to catch and it’s very dangerous work. If the men decide to go crocodile hunting, it’s a team effort that’s highly organized. They only do it a few times a month.

The women work in the village, doing laundry, cooking, repairing homes, taking care of children and going into the forest to gather fruit, nuts and plants.

Steve isn’t allowed to join the fishermen for a while, but he doesn’t mind. He has lots to learn in the village.

He accompanies the women when they go into the forest and learns what plants are safe to eat, what plants are poisonous, and what plants have healing or medical qualities. He learns how to prepare healing balms and how to make bandages and how to brew different teas which have healing qualities.

He learns how to make clay bricks to build new homes or repair the current ones and how to repair the thatch roofs. He learns how to repair fishing nets and how to make new ones, and how to make spears.

He learns about the different animals which live in the forest and which animals will avoid him, and which animals he should avoid. He learns what signs to look for to identify an animal’s home and the signs of an unusual predator in the area. He makes himself a spear and carries that with him whenever he goes into the forest. It’s good for poking the undergrowth to scare out any dangerous animals lurking beneath the vegetation, and he can lift away snakes and defend himself if he comes face to face with something dangerous.

He’d asked why the villagers don’t hunt for bush meat, and he was told that their responsibility is to the river’s animals. Other villages are responsible for the forest animals. They trap and maintain the forest populations, while Steve’s village focuses on the river’s populations. If everybody hunted whatever animals they wanted, the populations would quickly diminish and that would lead to problems for multiple villages. Their village can get bush meat by trading with other villages.

Since he doesn’t need to worry about trapping any unsuspecting animals, he tries to make as much noise as possible while he’s walking around, which hopefully scares away most dangerous animals before he gets close to them.

But while large animals are off limits for their village, insects are not.

Steve has grown up being an extremely flexible eater. Poor people didn’t survive the Depression by being picky eaters. While he has absolutely no problem eating things out of the trash, eating things that are a few days past their peak date and eating almost every part of an animal except the hide and bones, Steve does get squeamish when it comes to eating insects.

The textures throw him off a bit—some things are very crunchy, others are slimy—but the fact that most people eat the insects while they’re still alive gives him the shudders. Just the thought that the thing could crawl back up his throat makes him want to run far, far away from it.

But the insects are nutritious, they’re easy to catch and they can be dried and stored very easily, so Steve is determined to get used to it.

He learns which insects are safe to eat and which ones are not, and after tiring of the constant laughter he gets from the crowd which always gathers to watch him try a new insect, he practices getting accustomed to them when he’s in the privacy of his tent. He figures out which ones he absolutely can’t stand the taste of, and practices eating the ones which aren’t that bad.

As expected, he gets used to it quickly. Some insects even start tasting enjoyable, and after he has a serious debate with himself about whether a creature that’s been mashed to bits by his teeth can _really_ crawl back up his throat or not, he eventually gets to the point where he can eat them without taking the time to kill them beforehand. Most of them taste better when they’re fresh anyway.

He waits until he’s eating dinner with Akanni and Urbi one evening—Urbi has always been one of the spectators who finds Steve’s insect eating one of the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen—and when Akanni is taking handfuls of live caterpillars out of a bowl and eating them as dessert, Steve asks if he can have some. He watches Urbi out of the corner of his eye while he confidently reaches into the bowl, grabs three caterpillars and tosses them into his mouth as smoothly as if they were pieces of fruit. He keeps a straight face while he chews and swallows.

Only then does he look at Urbi and give her a pleasant smile. She’s staring at him—clearly waiting for him to go into his usual hysterics.

Steve keeps his smile innocent and blinks at her. “Are you alright?” He’d looked up how to say that phrase in Wakandan specifically for this conversation.

And it’s so worth it.

Akanni is the first to burst out laughing. He points at Steve and flaps his other hand at Urbi. “My love! Do you see this? Do you see this?!”

In Wakandan ‘love’ is used as an endearment for a spouse, and it’s rare that Akanni gets emotional enough to use it in front of others, especially Steve. Clearly, Steve has managed to surprise Akanni as much as Urbi.

That’s when Steve can’t keep a straight face anymore and starts laughing too.       

Urbi struggles to smoother her own smile and mock-glares at Steve. She reaches over and smacks his arm a few times—a sign of high affection coming from her. “Good job, foreigner. Good job.”

The women love having him around because he can do all the tasks which the men would normally do, but they’re always busy on the river.

He spends days digging a new outhouse pit when the old one fills up, and the men take a rare day off fishing to move the building to the new location when it’s ready. Steve also takes on the task of mixing and filling up the old pit.

He knows Bucky will laugh when he tells him this story. Bucky had spent many summers digging latrine pits or filling old pits. During the summer, mixing and filling old latrine pits was one of the worst jobs to have. It wasn’t unheard of for men to faint from the stench. That meant there were always job openings and the pay was good. Bucky used those summers to pay off as many of Steve’s overdue medical bills as possible before another illness-filled winter was upon them.

Seventy years later and half a world away, Steve is doing the same job.

He chops wood, carries water, does the laundry, repairs clothes, learns how to weave baskets and mats and even tries his hand at pottery. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have the natural talent that’s required to make actual dishes that can hold liquid substances. He does manage to make some plates, which immediately get a position of honor amongst his little stack of dishes.

Most importantly, he works on learning Wakandan. He learns as much vocabulary as possible when he’s working with somebody during the day, but most of his lessons come from Akanni when the fisherman comes home from the river.

Steve often joins Urbi and Akanni for dinner, bringing his own stump stool, food and dishes and taking turns cooking over their fire. Eventually they allow him to keep the stump stool there permanently, and Steve carves it into a more comfortable shape and adds piles of grasses and leaves to it to make it as comfortable as the other village chairs.

There’s one evening when Steve actually has some meat, and neither Urbi nor Akanni do. The fish which Akanni catches is always divided between his family and the village council, who distribute it to families who need more assistance and the elderly who have no one to take care for them. Akanni’s portion of today’s catch had been traded for some pain-relief balm for an old back injury he has. But Steve had negotiated for some dried fish a few days ago, so he has some.

He divides the fish he has into three portions and when Urbi and Akanni are starting on their own bread and fruit, Steve hands them each a portion.

Urbi shakes her head. “No, no, foreigner. I have nothing to trade for it. You earned it.”

Steve smiles. “You give friendship to me. You teach me many things.”

Akanni leans forward. “Say: You give _your_ friendship to me. You _have taught_ me many things.”

It’s difficult to focus on the Wakandan wording when the translator in his ear squawks in English, but Steve’s getting used to it.

He dutifully repeats the phrases correctly.

Both Urbi and Akanni smile, and take the offered fish from Steve.

After dinner, they often sit outside the house or down by the river, and Akanni teaches Steve more Wakandan. Urbi is a terrible language teacher, and Steve isn’t the best student, but Akanni just seems to know how to structure things and how to teach him. Like everyone else in the village, the man can’t read or write but there’s no need for him to know how.

When Steve starts to relax and really enjoy life in the village, he realizes how much better he feels.

He has more energy, he’s excited to go to sleep in the evenings because he knows he has a day full of enjoyable activities to look forward to. He loves the hard work, he loves learning things, and he loves getting to know the other villagers and slowly watching as their guards drop around him.

The crushing loneliness and sadness are disappearing day by day.

He’s eating better now that his appetite has returned, he’s sleeping like a log and he’s feeling stronger every day, both mentally and physically.

He’s keeping his hands busy and his mind busy, and even thinking about Bucky doesn’t fill him with the same heart-aching despair as before. Bucky’s fine, time isn’t even passing for him, and Steve has no doubt T’Challa will eventually find a solution for the trigger words. Until then, Steve’s finally getting his own life on track.

Once Bucky wakes up for good, Steve will be a much better version of himself as he’d been when he’d reunited with Bucky in this future world.

*             *             *

He realizes early on that he needs a way to keep track of days. He wants to make sure he’ll keep his promise to visit Bucky once a month, and he wants to catch up with T’Challa on a regular basis.

Nobody in the village keeps track of days. They use the seasons and natural indicators to let them know when they need to be doing what.

Market days happen randomly. A messenger will show up and tell all the villages in the area when market day will be. Once it arrives, everybody gathers the dried fish, fresh fish and other goods they can trade and head off to the market.

The market takes place in a clearing by the side of the road, two hours away from their village. Everybody starts out early, carrying their baskets and bags of tradeable supplies and eating breakfast along the way. Steve always volunteers to help pull the hand cart that’s laden full of baskets of fresh fish. They pull it in about twenty minute shifts and then rotate so everyone can drink water and eat breakfast before they get to the market.

At first Steve spends market days exploring and seeing what everybody else has to offer. Everybody lays out their goods on mats and in baskets and people wander around, trading goods with each other.

When Steve knows enough Wakandan and he’s proven to Urbi that he’s learned to bargain properly, she allows him to take over their little mat while she and Akanni go around socializing and trading their own goods.

It’s not only Steve’s job to make sure he’s getting a fair bargain for Urbi and Akanni, but he can’t take advantage of their buyer—that’s disrespectful—and he also has to make sure the goods he’s getting in exchange are things they actually need. In return for helping them out, Steve gets to take one third of whatever he’d received during the day.

While the forest and river provides most things the village needs, the soil at the river isn’t a good quality. It’s heavy, thick clay, which is great for pottery and making bricks, but it’s not good for farming. Market days are the only days when they have easy access to vegetables and grains. Metal is also difficult to come by. Some villagers work in the mines on the other side of the rock and they bring metal axes, spear heads, knives and pots to the market to trade.

Replenishing their stock of vegetables, grain and metal parts is always his village’s top priority, but sometimes Steve will use his own supplies—mostly fruits and plants he’s collected or mats and baskets he’s woven—to get himself some meat that’s not fish or crocodile just for more variety.

Once he gets the hang of it, Steve loves market days. He works hard to learn faces and names so he can greet familiar people. He learns who is an easy bargainer, who wants to chat for half an hour, and who is a very tough bargainer and will make Steve work for every inch.

There are people everywhere, there is noise everywhere and there is stuff everywhere: food, clothing, dishes, animals, baskets and medical supplies. People are carrying things, and handing things to each other and piling things onto carts. It’s busy and hectic and it’s always a bit jarring to go from the quiet, routine life in the village to the hustle bustle of the market.

But market days are nothing— _nothing_ —compared to going back to the city to visit Bucky.

When Steve had realized that nobody kept track of days, he’d started doing it himself. He made himself a wooden calendar, carving the Wakandan days of the week and Wakandan months on some wooden blocks and making numbered blocks. He carved a little three sided box to put them in and he can set it up to show the date and the day of the week. Every morning when he wakes up, he rotates the blocks to show the new day. Sometimes he knocks the wooden calendar over so he checks with T’Challa from time to time to make sure he’s got the right date showing.

At the end of the each month, Steve starts making preparations to visit Bucky.

The evening before he goes, he always takes extra time to bathe and take care of his hair and beard. Bathing and maintaining his hair and beard have become annoying chores which he only does when absolutely necessary. Bathing isn’t a high priority in the village and when somebody lives in completely natural environments, it’s impossible to stay clean for any length of time.

Nobody in the village cares what Steve looks like and they all smell the same anyway. It reminds Steve of living in Brooklyn. They didn’t have running water there either and bathing was an annoying chore that required a lot of time and effort. It was much easier to get accustomed to each other’s smells. The city didn’t smell too good back then either, and most of the people around them smelled the same. They got used to it.

Within a few days of being in the village, Steve can no longer smell the outhouse or the stench of the people around him.

But the villagers can’t get over how much hairier Steve is than them. They’re especially fascinated by his rapidly growing hair. The thin, straight strands are so different from their own. Everybody loves touching Steve’s hair and beard: children, women and the men. At first Steve had found it bizarre and uncomfortable, but then he realized there was no harm in letting them explore. They aren’t making fun of him and Steve realizes how bizarre his hair must be compared to what they know. He convinces himself he’s letting his hair and beard grow out as a community service, but the truth is he’s just too lazy to maintain them and he’s happy to have the excuse to ignore them both.

But when his hair starts getting into his eyes and his beard gets in the way when he’s eating, Steve brings a pair of scissors and a small mirror from the palace so he can keep them trimmed and relatively neat, but it’s too much of a hassle to regularly cut his hair or shave.

The night before visiting Bucky is one of the few times Steve gets excited about bathing and trimming his hair and beard. He knows Bucky’s the last person to care how Steve looks (Bucky won’t be looking at Steve anyway) but Steve feels better getting cleaned up for his visit, and it’s more respectful to T’Challa and the palace staff if he’s presentable.

A few days before he leaves, he always goes to village council and requests permission to temporarily leave. The first time he asks, Obasi (and the rest of council) aren’t too pleased to let him leave his tent and other things behind, since they assume he won’t be back and they don’t want to deal with his ‘foreigner’ trash—Obasi says it when he doesn’t realize he’d forgotten to tell Steve to take his translation device out—but Akanni agrees to keep Steve’s supplies in his house until he gets back.

The day before he goes, he always gives T’Challa a call on his communication stone to let him know when he’ll be arriving. He’s kept his promise and he contacts T’Challa once a week to talk about his week and how Bucky’s doing.

Steve doesn’t need his large backpack. He brings small a leather bag he’d sewn himself from leather he’d traded for at a market day. He packs his water bottle, some food, a small present for T’Challa and makes sure he’s got all of the things T’Challa had given him as gifts, then he heads off.

Nobody in the village has reason to take the bus, so Steve had consulted with other villagers on market days to figure out when the bus came. It drives to the city once in the morning, and returns in the evening.

The bus comes ‘at sunrise’, so Steve makes the trek through the forest in the dark. He’s familiar enough with the paths through the forest now, and he’s got his own spear for protection, so he’d turned down Urbi’s offer to go with him to the bus stop.

He eats his breakfast while sitting on the side of the road, waiting for the bus. When it arrives, he gets on and grabs a seat. The bus makes a few more stops, picking up village children whose parents have chosen to send them to school in the city, as well as the few villagers who chose to work in the city or the mines.

They get to the rock and everybody piles out and starts the trek up to the tunnel. Every time he does the walk, Steve gets more comfortable with it and he spends more time watching his fellow commuters and listening in on their conversations.

When Steve makes it to the bottom of the mountain, he follows the crowd to the bus station and they all pile onto the buses waiting to take them into the city.

When the bus gets into the city, Steve always gets a bit overwhelmed at being back in such surroundings.

That feeling of mild panic and discomfort which Steve had started to accept as normal before he’d left the city always comes rushing back. He happy and calm living in the village, and whenever he gets back into the city, the old negative emotions flood back.

As he stares up at the skyscrapers and the busy streets with people and cars moving everywhere, he’s overwhelmed with the noise and the lack of color. Everything is grey metal or glass.

He misses the sound of the river. He misses sitting on Akanni and Urbi’s doorstep, watching the children chasing each other by the river bank. He misses chatting with Obasi at the old man’s fire pit by his house. He misses going to sleep to the sound of insects chirping and the river gently running by. He misses the beautiful dark green of the forest, the colorful fruits and the red brick houses.

But he’d promised Buck he’d visit. And if that means putting up with the discomfort of being back in the city, he can do put up with it for one day a month.

He rides the bus to the last station and walks the rest of the way to the palace. During his first few visits, he’d encountered new guards who hadn’t known him when he’d lived in the palace, so explaining that he had an appointment with King T’Challa had been met with doubtful facial expressions and some laughter.

Steve had pulled out the white stone necklace from under his shirt, and their doubt and laughter had immediately turned to confusion. The guards had carefully examined the necklace and then one of them had stepped away to make a call on his communication stone. Steve had waited, keeping a polite smile on his face.

The guard had eventually come back and asked him multiple questions to make sure he really was the visitor the King was expecting: how long will he stay, where did he come from, why is he visiting the King etc. Steve had anticipated the questions and Akanni had helped him learn the necessary phrases to answer the questions. Steve had been careful to make his answers seem natural—he’d deliberately dropped some articles and used the wrong tenses. He hadn’t wanted them assuming he was fluent and forcing him to engage in a longer conversation.

After more consultation on their communication stones, they’d finally allowed Steve to pass.

By his third visit, one of the two guards is familiar to Steve, and thankfully, Steve is familiar to him, so his request to get into the palace to see the King is met with much less laughter and doubt.

He does have to go through the required security scans that verify his identity and whether he’s carrying any weapons. He always has to surrender his spear and knife.

By the time he’s spent about ten minutes in the palace, he always starts to realize how bad he smells. There are so many different smells in the village—some good, some not so good—and the bus is always crowded and filled with animals and people like him who don’t have access to the best bathing facilities. It isn’t until he gets to the palace that he notices how incredibly dirty and smelly he is.

It’s always a shock to notice that disgusting stench following him around…and then to realize that the stench is _him_ is even more shocking.

He always apologizes to the guards, who wrinkle their noses and try their best to maintain a polite, professional demeanor while they do their security checks.

Once he’s let through the gates, he heads right for the medical wing. He hurries through the other wings until he gets to the cryo room. It’s not unusual for the room to be empty.

There’s just the cryo chamber, and Bucky.

Steve hurries up to the chamber and stares at Bucky, anxiously checking over his features to see if something’s changed.

He always looks exactly the same. In this case, having Bucky look exactly the same each time is a good sign. It means the cryo unit is functioning as it should and Bucky’s fine. Just like T’Challa always assures him he is.

Then it’s shower time. “I’ll be right back, Buck. Just gotta get clean.”

He leaves his bag on the chair and hurries to the small bathroom that’s off the cryo room. It’s usually for staff, but when Steve had explained to the servants why he needed to use it, they happily stocked it full of things he might need.

There are dozens of shampoos, soaps, razors, combs, scissors and towels, as well as spare clothes. It’s always a bit overwhelming so Steve always takes a small pile of plain things and focuses on those.

It gets stranger using a shower every time he comes back to the city. He’s used to bathing while he’s standing knee deep in the river. The water is usually by his feet, not gushing over his head. But having a shower is faster, and speed is what he needs on these days.

He scrubs himself clean and uses the huge mirror to his advantage and trims his beard and hair.

When he smells like somebody who should be walking around a royal palace and his hair and beard are more presentable, he pulls on the spare clothes and throws his own clothes into the washing machine.

While those are washing, he heads back out to Bucky, toweling his hair dry.

Steve checks the read-outs on the monitors, drapes the towel over his shoulder, then changes the display to English and flips through the historical records to check what’s been recorded for the past month.

No changes.                                                                              

Bucky really has been fine. Well, as fine as a man frozen in a glass tube could possibly be.

Steve puts the displays back the way they were and goes back to Bucky. “Everything looks good, Buck. That’s great.”

He pulls his usual chair closer to the cryo unit and has a seat. “Guess what? I finally managed to eat caterpillars. _Live_ caterpillars. Yeah, that’s crazy, isn’t it? I’m getting used to them actually. They taste pretty good. You’d like them.”

He knows it’s silly to talk to Bucky like this. Bucky can’t hear him anyway so it doesn’t matter if Steve talks to him while he’s at the village or here in the medical wing, but talking to Bucky always gives Steve comfort, regardless of whether Bucky can hear him or not.

Having Bucky actually hear him would be one of the greatest gifts in the world—but until he has that back, he’ll settle for just talking to him.

Steve’s in the middle of telling Bucky how to weave a basket when T’Challa comes into the room.

Steve immediately gets to his feet, doing a little bow. “Your Majesty!”

T’Challa inclines his head in greeting and extends his hand towards Steve. He doesn’t shake Steve’s hand, he grasps Steve’s forearm and gives it an enthusiastic squeeze. “Steve, as always, it’s so good to see you.”

T’Challa looks him over. “You’re looking better every time I see you, my friend. Healthier, happier. I was worried about you. Not just your physical health, but your mental health.”

Steve blinks hard. “I—I was too. It’s why I had to leave, you know that. But I feel much better now. Getting better every day.”

T’Challa nods. “Yes, village life seems to suit you. I don’t understand it—it’s not a lifestyle that appeals to me at all as you know—but it seems to agree with you.”

Steve laughs. They’ve been over this many times—T’Challa not understanding how Steve could enjoy life removed from nearly all technology (with the exception of the communication stone they use for their chats), and Steve not understanding how T’Challa could enjoy being surrounded by so much technology and metal all the time.

T’Challa pulls up another chair and gestures to Steve to sit back down. They chat for a while, catching up on things from the last week which they hadn’t discussed previously. Steve gives T’Challa a mini basket he’d woven for him.

T’Challa is thrilled with the basket, turning it over in his hands. “I can’t believe you made this. I know people do this, but it seems like magic to me.”

Steve shrugs. “It’s not that hard. You just use river grass. That stuff is incredibly strong but amazingly flexible. You can make all sorts of things with it: baskets, mats, bags, toys.”

T’Challa stares at him, incredulous. He shakes his head. “I’m very happy for you, Steve. Truly.”

Steve smiles. “Thank you for everything you’re doing for me, and for Buck. The only reason I’m doing better is because you gave me that necklace and you’ve allowed me to stay in your country.”

T’Challa reaches over and squeezes his hand. “I’m happy to help my friends however I can, and you and Bucky are my friends.”

Steve smiles. “Anything new from the last week?”

T’Challa knows Steve is asking about advancements regarding their research. “Not yet. I’ll contact you and tell you the moment we have something.”

Steve stares at Bucky through the glass. “Sometimes I get scared that we’ll never find an answer.”

T’Challa makes an unimpressed noise. “You must continue to have faith, Steve. You know we already have some options, but they aren’t the best options and they would require Bucky to make some sacrifices. Since you and he have indicated that the timing of this is not urgent, I would rather continue looking for the best possible option. But if you feel that too much time has passed, we can wake Bucky and consult with him.”

Steve shakes his head. “No. If he knows there are options, he’ll jump on them to make me happy. I’m not agreeing to crazy, risky procedures.”

“You can wait?”

Steve stares at Bucky. He sighs softly, but nods. “Yeah, I can wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying Steve's adventure! I'd love to know what you think so far!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the wonderful reviews! I'm so happy you're enjoying Steve's adventures in Wakanda!

Steve is lying in his tent, chatting with T’Challa about his week, when the King suddenly asks if Steve would be okay with him coming for a visit.

Steve sits up straight. “Here? You wanna come here?”

T’Challa laughs. “There’s no need to sound so surprised. It’s not my preferred environment, but I do travel around my kingdom frequently. It’s my duty to connect with my people and to know how everything is going.”

“You’ve come out here before?”

“Oh, yes. I was a young boy the last I visited your village. I accompanied my father and I’m sorry to say I don’t remember much about it. But do I visit the outer regions several times a year. However, this visit would be special.”

Steve frowns. “How so?”

“I want to thank your village personally for taking in one of my friends and for taking such good care of him.”

That leaves Steve speechless. “I—T’Challa, you—”

The King chuckles. “You’re about to say I don’t have to thank them, but I want to. If somebody takes good care of somebody I care about, I want to make sure they know I appreciate it.”

Steve bites his lip. “Won’t that make things weird? I like that I’m nobody special out here. I left the shield behind for a reason—well, many reasons—but I like that everybody treats me like a regular person out here.”

T’Challa makes an affirmative noise. “Don’t worry, Steve. It will be fine.”

*             *             *

Steve is a bit nervous about it, but once T’Challa sends official word to the village that he’s coming, the decision is out of his hands.

Officially, T’Challa just says he wants to visit the village and see how everybody’s doing. Since their particular village hasn’t had a royal visit in many years, everybody gets into a bit of a flutter.

House walls are scrubbed, hasty roof patches are given more eye-pleasing fixes, everybody is told to clean out their fire pits and children are sent around the village to pick up bits of trash like shrivelled up fruit skins or animal bones.

Village council carefully plans out every detail of T’Challa’s visit. The most talented carvers are told to make a brand new stool which the King will sit on, new dishes are made, new baskets are woven and there is an argument for several days over what the menu should be.

Steve lets himself get swept up by the excitement. The night before T’Challa is due to arrive, Steve joins the rest of the village in the river, bathing himself as thoroughly as he does before he visits the palace. He knows this time he won’t have the benefit of having an actual shower before he speaks to T’Challa, so he does the best he can. He scrubs his clothes and trims his hair and beard.

On the day T’Challa comes, nobody has any work planned. It’s like an unofficial holiday has been declared.

Steve joins the other villagers by the road, all of them standing in a crowd behind village council, eagerly awaiting the long line of cars which will bring the King. There’s a twitter of excitement around him, everybody shifting nervously and craning their necks, trying to see down the road. Urbi is standing next to him and she keeps smacking Steve on the arm and shooting him excited grins.

Finally somebody lets out a shout and yells that he can see the vehicles coming.

Steve is taller than most of the villagers, so he has no problem seeing everything. The vehicles arrive and armed female guards are the first to climb out, immediately fanning out in the area and surveying the villagers and the surrounding area.

Then T’Challa himself steps out. Steve has rarely seen him wearing anything other than his Black Panther uniform or casual clothes, but the King has chosen to wear a more traditional shirt this time.

He’s smiling and gives the crowd a nod in greeting.

Everybody around Steve bows their heads out of respect, and Steve does the same.

“What a wonderful welcome, my friends. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here today and see your beautiful village.”

Obasi steps forward, does a deeper bow and introduces himself as the head of village council. T’Challa squeezes Obasi’s forearm. “Obasi, it’s an honor to meet you. I believe the last time we met I was a young child. Forgive me but I don’t recall our meeting.”

“Your Majesty, there is nothing to forgive. Please, allow me to introduce the rest of village council.”

T’Challa happily greets the rest of council, learning everybody’s names and squeezing arms and returning bows with grateful nods.

Steve is impressed by the King’s ability to greet each person as if they’re long lost friends even though he’s meeting many of them for the first time.

He’s charming, polite and Steve finds himself feeling giddy at being in his company. It’s ridiculous because this is the same man who had told him a month ago he’d tried turning the pages of an actual book by tapping on them and getting annoyed when it didn’t work. Steve had laughed so hard he’d nearly choked on his lunch.

There is no trace of that man now. He is calm, professional and completely in control of his actions.

That’s when it hits Steve that this is T’Challa’s job. This is the responsibility he was born into and this is the job he will do for the rest of his life. He was trained how to be a King from the day he was born, and unlike Steve, he can’t just give up that responsibility when it becomes too much for him.

T’Challa doesn’t greet each of the villagers personally and once he’s greeted village council, Obasi leads the procession back into the village.

The security guards surround the crowd, letting T’Challa mingle with village council, but keeping an eye on everybody else. Steve follows along as they wind through the forest and reach the first few homes.

They bring T’Challa on a tour first, showing him the few home which had passed Obasi’s inspection yesterday, as well as the docking area where the fishing boats are kept. Obasi walks a very deliberate path through the village, staying far away from Steve’s little tent.

“It’s not fit for a King’s eyes, Steve,” Obasi had told him, giving him a look like that fact should have been obvious.

Steve didn’t feel too insulted, because he agrees with him, and Urbi and Akanni’s home was also deemed ‘unfit’, so he’s in good company.

They show T’Challa racks of drying fish and the kiln where they bake bricks and pottery. They go for a short walk through the forest, T’Challa asking questions about where they find such-and-such plants and fruit, and the status of some animal and plant populations in the forest and river.

When the tour is finished, Obasi leads T’Challa to their big communal fire pit—which Steve had helped clean the day before yesterday—and T’Challa is offered a brand new, big stump stool. It’s been covered in the softest, best quality grasses and leaves, all beautifully woven into thick cushion.

It’s definitely a seat fit for a King.

T’Challa has a seat and that’s the village’s cue to start bringing him the gifts which had been the subject of many arguments over the past few days.

The most beautifully woven baskets, the best quality dishes and baskets full of dried fish and fruit are brought and presented to T’Challa by the lucky people who had been chosen to prepare the gifts.

T’Challa seems thrilled with the gifts and the people bringing them to him, asking for their names and getting them to tell him how they made the gift and thanking them for the beautiful gesture. He inspects and gushes over everything he’s brought, before a security guard whisks it away somewhere to make room for the next gift.

Steve hasn’t had a hand in making any of those things, but he’s smiling like a fool and feels himself brimming with pride on behalf of the villagers who are being praised.

Damn, that man is good at his job.

Then it’s time for a meal and they bring T’Challa the best assortment of the food they have available, offering him plate after plate of food. The King samples a little bit of everything, praising the person who prepared it and thanking them for the time they had spent.

Finally, he brushes off his hands and smiles at the crowd. “That was a wonderful meal, my friends. Now, I have taken up enough attention. Please, help yourselves to all this food and have a good meal. If village council will permit, I would like to speak with a friend of mine.”

Steve is so busy watching what’s going on that he doesn’t realize T’Challa was talking about him until Obasi is waving his hand towards him and beckoning him over.

Steve hurries over and T’Challa reaches out his hand. Steve gives him his hand and the King squeezes his forearm. Steve bows his head respectfully.

“Steve, it’s good to see you, my friend.”

“It’s good to see you, your Majesty. Thank you for coming.”

“Come, show me the boats again. I want to take a closer look.”

Obasi steps forward, obviously torn between letting T’Challa do what he wants and letting Steve take the King around by himself.

T’Challa gives Obasi a smile. “It’s fine, Obasi. Please, enjoy your meal. You have worked hard and deserve a rest. Steve will take good care of me.”

Steve nods and gives the village elder an optimistic smile. Obasi gives him a flat look, clearly warning him not to mess up.

Steve leads T’Challa back towards the docking area, two security guards trailing after them.

T’Challa waits until they’re out of earshot. “That chair is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever sat on. Is yours like that?”

Steve laughs. “Mine isn’t nearly as comfortable. Yours is top quality.”

T’Challa chuckles. “Then I apologize. I should be more grateful.”

“You’re not a fan of living rough, there’s no shame in that. You use technology every day which most of us in this village wouldn’t be able to figure out.”

“We all have our strengths I suppose.”

“Absolutely.”

They come to a stop at the docking area and T’Challa looks down at the boats. Steve feels a bit panicked.

“Uh, did you actually wanna ask me about the boats? I know nothing about the boats. Nothing. They’re made out of wood. That’s all I know.”

T’Challa smiles. “I don’t need to know about the boats, Steve. I attended many lectures in my youth where I learned about the traditional ways. But do yourself a favor and gesture at the boats once in a while. You know Obasi is watching you very closely.”

Steve makes an exaggerated hand motion at the boats and T’Challa nods enthusiastically.

“That’s good. Do that from time to time and hopefully he won’t give himself a heart attack.”

Steve smiles. “I saw that man run into the river and kill a crocodile with just a spear a few days ago. I don’t think anything can give him a heart attack.”

T’Challa grins. “Did you know he went to university?”

Steve frowns. “Who? Obasi?”

“Yes. He was my father’s schoolmate in university. I believe he focused on biochemistry. He was a respected scientist in the city for many years. He’d grown up here and I believe when his father passed, he decided to return to the village permanently. Like you, he enjoys this lifestyle more than city life.”

That would explain how an old man living in the woods knows about high level technology and other parts of city life which Steve thought he hadn’t ever experienced.

His respect and admiration for Obasi grows even bigger.

T’Challa is looking at the river and the trees on the opposite shore.

Steve glances at the rest of the villagers, all of whom are eating and staring at them. “Are all your visits like this?”

“Yes, most of them. I love meeting different people and seeing what their talents are. I hate that everybody makes such a fuss when I come, but that comes with the territory I suppose.”

“You’re tougher than I am. I hated that amount of responsibility.”

T’Challa smiles. “No, that’s not why you hated it. The difference between your situation and mine is that I am surrounded by support and people who care about me at all hours of the day. I’ve had those things since I was young. You lost that when they took you out of the ice. Any crown can get too heavy if you have nobody to help hold you up on your bad days.”

“I’m doing much better these days.”

T’Challa smiles. “I know. And that pleases me enormously. And I know it will please Bucky.”

That reminds Steve. “How’s he doing? I know we talked a couple of days ago, but…”

“He’s fine. We don’t have any new leads which are promising, but our research continues, as you know. But he’s fine.”

T’Challa had told him that he sits with Bucky once a week. He doesn’t often talk to him, but he just sits in the cryo room and does paperwork. It means the world to Steve that T’Challa truly cares about Bucky as much as he cares about Steve.

“Thank you for taking care of both of us. I—I’m so grateful that you took us in and you accepted us into your life and your country.”

T’Challa smiles. “True friends are hard to come by. When I met you and Bucky, I realized quickly you are true friends to each other, and those kinds of people are ones I like having in my life.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. T’Challa claps him on the shoulder. “Steve?”

“Hmm?”

“Make another hand gesture towards the boats. Obasi is watching.”

Steve gestures and T’Challa nods again. “Alright, let’s go back. Time for me to give you all your presents.”

“What presents?”

T’Challa exchanges a grin with one of the security guards. “That’s a surprise, Steve.”

When they get back to the rest of the villagers, T’Challa tells Obasi that Steve was a wonderful host and was very knowledgeable.

Steve can see the old man struggling between keeping a polite facial expression his face and glaring suspiciously at Steve. He knows Steve knows nothing about fishing or the boats.

Steve gives him an innocent smile and carefully scoots through the crowd to find Akanni and grab something to eat.

T’Challa sends some of his security guards to the vehicles and they come back with large, heavy boxes.

“To thank you for your wonderful hospitality today, but also for the wonderful hospitality and kindness you have shown to my dear friend Steve, I want to offer you a gift. Steve tells me that you don’t have access to metal.”

Obasi’s gaze darts back and forth between Steve and T’Challa. “Uh, yes, your Majesty. I mean, no, you are correct, we don’t have access to metal. We use stones when we can, and we trade for metal with other villages. It is precious to us.”

T’Challa nods. “I know. That’s why I hope my gift will be useful to you.”

He gestures for the guards to open the boxes, and they’re filled with metal ax heads, metal knives, metal spear heads, and one box is just filled with metal pots.

Steve feels a thrill of excitement race through him at the sight of the pots. Oh, how desperately he’s been waiting to gather up enough supplies to be able to trade for a new pot!

And he’s never been able to make a spear with a metal head. He’s always used sharp rocks.

Everybody around him goes into a tizzy, excited voices swelling and everybody pointing at the boxes. There are huge smiles everywhere.

T’Challa looks around and nods. He seems pleased. “I take it my gift is well received?”

Obasi steps forward, a huge smile on his face. “Very, your Majesty, Very. Thank you so much for this kindness. It’s really too much.”

“No, it’s not. You took in a good friend of mine for no payment, no reward. You’ve given him a community and a home when he had none. You knew he was my friend, yet you never expected any favors from me. You are good, kind people and you deserve these gifts.”

Obasi bows deeply and then looks through the crowd at Steve. “Steve! Come and thank his Majesty. And pick out a new pot. You will finally be able to cook again without water leaking out of your pot and putting out your fire.”

Steve has never been more excited to look through a box full of metal pots.

*             *             *

A few months after arriving in the village, Steve notices that his paper picture of Bucky in his watch is starting to rot. It’s not a complete surprise. He’s living in a rainforest. Everything is always moist and warm.

He tries to find a better place to keep the watch and the precious picture it holds, but the picture gets worse as the weeks go by.

He thinks about carving a picture of Bucky into river rocks, but he won’t be able to get the same detail as he does on paper.

He hates the thought of not being able to look at Bucky before he goes to sleep each night. Not to mention, it’ll make the rainy days even more boring.

They’re living in a rainforest and as the name would suggest, it rains frequently, and in most cases, the rain is a torrential downpour. It only lasts for a few hours, but everybody stays in their homes until the rain has stopped. Sometimes Steve will visit other people’s homes, but he doesn’t want to always intrude in other people’s lives, so he spends most of the rainy days in his tent, staring at the roof and watching the rain drops bounce off the canvas. He has little projects that he can work on—weaving things, carving things, reading his Wakandan dictionary—which is also slowly falling to pieces—and practicing the names of different things in his head.

Most of his day is spent with the watch sitting on the pillow next to him and he talks to Bucky’s picture.

Bucky’s picture is sometimes the only company he has on the rainy days, and the thought of losing it makes him unbelievably sad.

The next time he’s visiting Bucky, Steve spends too much time staring at Bucky in the cryo unit, and he must be acting like a sad sack, because T’Challa asks him what’s troubling him.

“It’s something silly, don’t worry about it.”

T’Challa doesn’t look any less concerned. “You’re my friend and something is troubling you. That’s not a silly matter.”

“I—I have this picture of Buck that I keep with me at the village, but paper doesn’t do too well in that environment. It’ll be gone soon and I—it’s silly, but I like being able to look at Bucky every night.”

T’Challa’s face erupts into a huge smile. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?!”

Steve stares at him. “Because…I don’t find this amusing…?”

T’Challa shakes his head and struggles to get the smile off his face. “I apologize. I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I have a solution to your problem.”

“A solution? What kind of solution?”

“We often have researchers go into the jungle to monitor various things, and they have the same problem. Many of them prefer to make drawings on paper as opposed to electronic pads. They take specially designed plastic pouches with them. They are laced with a desiccant which prevents the moisture from being absorbed by the paper. I will give you some of these, my friend. As long as you store your paper in them, they should be fine.”

Steve stares at him. “Can—can I have paper too?”

T’Challa chuckles. “Of course you can have paper, Steve. Believe it or not, I do have spare paper around here. Except for that stupid book, I haven’t touched paper in a long time, but I know we have lots.” T’Challa frowns. “You didn’t bring paper with you?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. I didn’t think I’d need it.”

“So you haven’t been sketching?”

Steve stares at him. “How the hell did you—oh. Sam told you?”

T’Challa smiles. “Yes. You were a common topic of conversation between us. Answer my question.”

Steve sighs. “No, I haven’t been sketching.”

“Why don’t you take some paper, some pens and the plastic pouches with you and see if inspiration comes to you?”

“People don’t sketch with pens.”

T’Challa waves that aside with a smile. “Take whatever sketching utensil you want. If you can’t find it in the palace, I will order it for you and have it sent to you.” The King sobers and gives Steve a long look. “Steve, I really think it will help you if you started sketching again. You can start by making a new drawing of Bucky. Besides, I would like to see more of your village life. What I saw during my visit was highly sanitized and carefully orchestrated. I want to see what village life is like when you don’t have a royal visitor. You should draw me a picture and show it to me next time I see you.”

When Steve doesn’t immediately reply, T’Challa leans back in his chair with a smile, his eyes twinkling. “I could make it a royal decree, if you prefer. Then you would have no choice. You don’t want to let your King down, do you?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Don’t you have King stuff to do? Somewhere that’s not the cryo room?”

T’Challa laughs at him for a while.

*             *             *

Steve gets back to the village with a stack of paper, a new paper dictionary, a box of pencils and a bundle of the special plastic bags. He spends that evening re-sketching the picture of Bucky.

He’s out of practice and it takes him longer to draw Bucky than it usually does, but once it’s finished, Steve is thrilled with it. It’s much bigger than the little drawing in his pocket watch, and the plastic bag has a little hole at the top so Steve can use one of the ties hanging from his tent roof to tie the picture so it’s hanging up.

He can lie down and stare up at Bucky as long as he wants.

His nightly ritual is adjusted somewhat. Now he looks up at Bucky’s picture and practices telling him he loves him and blows him a kiss before he goes to sleep.

He agrees with T’Challa that sketching again will give him joy, so he wanders around the village in the evenings after dinner and finds different things to sketch.

He starts with easy things—the river, Urbi and Akanni’s house, beautiful trees and plants in the forest, and eventually starts challenging himself with more difficult things like animals in the forest or a group of villagers by the river swimming, bathing and doing laundry.

He’s careful to respect the villagers’ privacy. He always asks permission to sketch them, especially if people are running around with no clothes on. He keeps the sketches tasteful and respectful.

When word of Steve’s unusual gift starts to spread, it becomes normal for Steve to show up somewhere with his paper and pencil and sit somewhere and sketch, and soon he’ll have a small crowd gathered around him, watching him.

He starts offering to make sketches for people and when they’re complete, he puts them in a plastic bag and helps them hang the picture in their homes. He draws family portraits, a child’s favourite animal, or a plant which has a lot of meaning for somebody.

He also draws members of his own family, and course, lots of pictures of Bucky. He realizes he’s been drawing Bucky a lot when a little boy watching him sketch says “You’re drawing Bucky!” when Steve is only done with his facial outline and his hair. Sometimes he draws Bucky the way he looks today, and sometimes he draws him from his memories—either way, the villagers recognize Bucky in any picture he puts him in.

That always makes Steve feel happy.

When Steve notices that some of the villagers are particularly enthralled with his sketching, he offers to teach them. He doesn’t mind sharing his supplies. He has plenty and he can replenish his supplies whenever he goes back to the palace.

He does little classes a few times a week, gathering his group of students in the evenings. Their little group either goes to a spot that Steve wants them to sketch, or Steve will put an object on a stump and everybody will try to sketch it. It doesn’t matter that Steve is still far from being a fluent Wakandan speaker. By pointing and using his own pencil and paper, Steve has no problem teaching them.

On one of the rainy days when Steve is sitting in his tent with the door flap up, watching the rain pounding the river, he looks up at Bucky’s picture.

“You’d like days like this, wouldn’t you Buck? You always liked the rain. I never got why. I hate it.”

He’s working on one of his new projects. Sketching gives him something new to do during the rainy days, but having access to a huge stack of paper had given him another idea.

He can write letters to Bucky.

He’d started out making a list of things that he will need to teach Bucky, mostly hard-learned lessons which Steve stumbled through and which he wants to spare Bucky. But the list is boring and dry.

Steve remembers how he’d loved getting letters from his relatives in Ireland and from Bucky when he was at the front. It always filled him with such gratitude and joy, to know that somebody far away cared enough about him to take the time to craft a letter, put it into an envelope, address it, use a precious stamp on it, and walk it all the way to a post office, just for him.

He loves writing letters too. He likes thinking about his day, deciding what to write about and in what order, and taking the time to make it meaningful and special. He loves knowing that he’s letting somebody else experience his day with his words.

Even though Bucky can’t read any letters right now, he will eventually.

Steve watches the rain for a while, thinking over where to start.

Well, when in doubt, start at the beginning.

Steve takes out a new paper from his plastic bag collection, sharpens his pencil and starts writing.

_Dear Buck,_

_I left the city on a bus that was heading to the rock. The rock is the big mountain that you can see from the cryo room in the palace. The bus was really old and rickety and it shook and made all sorts of strange noises as we went along. We picked up all kinds of different people along the way. At one point, I even sat next to a cage of chickens!_

He decides to write down everything. The project is a labor of love. He spends many evenings crouched by his fire, writing until he can barely see the paper anymore. When he’s describing seeing or doing something new, he includes a small diagram right in the letter, or he makes a separate sketch. Many times he’s already sketched whatever he’s referring to, so he adds little numbers to the back of the sketches to correspond to that part of the letter.

Every month he collects his favourite new sketches and brings them to the palace. He shows the sketches to T’Challa and if the King likes one in particular, Steve makes him a copy that he brings with him on his next visit.

*             *             *

Steve is telling Urbi and Akanni a funny story about his childhood. He and Bucky had been playing stickball with other children and Bucky had torn off the buttons on his shorts so he had to run from base to base holding his shorts up.

Although Steve has told this story a hundred times over the course of his life, he laughs just as hard every time he tells it.

Akanni and Urbi laugh too, especially when Steve demonstrates how Bucky had looked running from base to base, holding his shorts up and yelling happily every time he rounded another base.

Urbi eventually stops laughing and makes a hand gesture in his direction. “So tell me. How long has he been your love?”

Steve stops laughing, that familiar regret seeping through him and replacing his giddiness.

“I—he isn’t. I mean, we haven’t—”

“You aren’t married?”

Steve gapes at her. Oh, if only. “No. No, we—we aren’t. We aren’t together. He—” Steve’s Wakandan and his heart aren’t strong enough for this conversation. “He is my love but I’m not his.”

Akanni stares at him. “The things you’ve told us about him, he does love you. That’s clear.”

“He—he does love me, but not in the way you love Urbi. Not like same.”

Akanni frowns. “Try again, Steve. Say: ‘Not the same way I love him’.”

It’s just like Akanni to turn any conversation into a language learning session, regardless of how emotional the topic is.

Steve dutifully repeats the sentence, getting the sentence structure correct this time.

Urbi makes an unimpressed sound. “Then he’s a fool.”

Steve laughs. It’s an ugly sound. “No, I’m the fool. I never told him that I love him.”

“Before he got sick?”

Everybody in the village knows that Bucky is in the city, that he’s very sick and living at the palace until he recovers. There’s no way Steve’s Wakandan would allow him to explain the whole story and he doesn’t feel it’s his place to tell the villagers about Bucky’s current situation anyway.

“Yes. I had much time to tell him. I never told him.”

Akanni gives him a hard look. “Regrets are like stones. Don’t pack your boat full of them or it’ll sink.”

Urbi nods and smacks Steve on the arm. “You should tell him after the King cures him.”

Steve smiles. “That’s my plan.”


	5. Chapter 5

After five months of living in the village, Obasi gives Steve permission to join the fishermen.

Akanni had explained to Steve that they didn’t want him out on the river as long as his Wakandan was weak. Fishing on the river is extremely dangerous and it’s vital that he’s able to communicate with his fellow fishermen at all times. Nobody likes depending on that little bit of technology in Steve’s ear.

As a result of spending every single day surrounded by people speaking Wakandan, and having Akanni teaching him, Steve progresses much faster than he had at the palace.

He practices whenever he can. He engages everyone in conversation, bringing up whatever topic comes into his head, as long as it gives him a chance to practice talking and listening. On rainy days, he talks to himself or Bucky and he tries to only use Wakandan. He practices verbally translating his letters to Bucky into Wakandan, and translating poems and stories he remembers from his childhood. Often he needs to consult his dictionary for words he doesn’t know, but those times grow less frequent as time goes on.

Eventually he gets confident enough to leave his translator device in his tent. The villagers ease him into it when they realize he isn’t using the translator anymore. They deliberately slow their speech and use simpler vocabulary. When Steve’s confidence continues to grow, he encourages people to speak normally and challenges himself to keep up with the conversation. It gets easier every day.

His hard work pays off.

He has a nerve-wracking ‘interview’ with village council where multiple council members hold conversations with him, expecting him to understand them and reply properly. Steve ends up impressing them—and himself—when he manages it without any big problems.

He still messes up his tenses sometimes and there are a lot of vocabulary words he’s missing, but he can fluently communicate with the people around him.

Village council gives him permission to fish.

The fishermen are mostly the older men, along with teenage boys who are learning to fish. It’s dangerous and very technical work, requiring intelligence, great balance and skill.

Steve has the intelligence, but it turns out he’s lacking the other two things.

He thought he had a good sense of balance but it turns out there’s the sense of balance he’d needed in his old life, and there’s the sense of balance these fishermen need…and the two things are not the same.

At all.

It hurts a bit when he shows up at the river bank where the boats are tied up, and most of the men don’t want anything to do with him.

No, that’s a lie. It hurts a _lot_ and Steve struggles to keep his friendly smile on his face.

He’s taken the time to learn everybody’s names and faces and he tries to interact with the men as much as he can, but it’s not his fault he’s been confined to the village so far.

A lot of the women and children had treated him with suspicion or disdain until they’d gotten to know him. Once they’d seen that he was respectful, hard-working and kind, he’d won them over.

He’s sure he can do the same with the men.

But thanks to Akanni, he doesn’t have to win over all of them. He’s already won over Akanni.

When Akanni shows up, the older man points at his boat and tells Steve exactly how to get the boat into the water and how to climb in without capsizing it.

For the first two days, Steve is only allowed to sit in the boat and breathe. He’s not allowed to paddle or touch any fishing equipment. He’s only allowed to ask quiet questions when Akanni is paddling. No questions are allowed to be asked while Akanni is hauling in fish or when he’s speaking to the other fishermen.

Within a few minutes of being in the boat, Steve realizes he won’t have any problems obeying those rules. He’s going to have his hands full trying to sit and breathe. Any other motions would result in him flipping the boat.

The boats are very narrow and can tip easily. Steve has no desire to end up in the crocodile infested water, and then having to explain to Urbi why her husband got eaten by a crocodile.

So far he’s only spent time in the river by the village. Whenever people are in the water washing clothes or dishes, bathing or swimming, it’s the job of the young boys (those who are too young to learn how to fish in the boats) to stand guard and watch for predators. The boys practice their spear fishing while they keep everybody safe, so it’s a good deal all around.

There are no guards out on the open river.

Steve is mentally lamenting the fact that the stupid boats are so damn narrow and tippy. Why can’t they build bigger boats?

Then he realizes that the boats are carved out of single logs, which makes them much more durable and water tight than using individual planks, not to mention they are easy to steer and propel against the current.

Steve will just have to get used to it.

He spends two days sitting frozen in the boat, watching in amazement as the other fishermen, including Akanni, spend their day _standing_ in these narrow, rocking logs. They bend over to drop nets into the water, haul up those same nets when they’re filled with heavy fish, cut the fish loose and drop the keepers into the boat and throw the small ones back.

Other times they’ll stand, aim their spears and  throw them with deadly accuracy—and not only does the swaying boat not tip over, but they manage to grab the rope attached to the flying spear so they can haul their catch back to the boat.

Sometimes they lean out so far that Steve has no idea how gravity is allowing them to still be standing in the boat on a moving water surface.

They just seem to know how to plant their feet and how to shift their bodies to keep the boat almost completely level in the moving water, while hauling heavy nets and fish around. They know how to use the current to move the boat where they want it to go, using long paddles to carve through the water.

Akanni will sometimes yell at Steve to lean a certain way when it’s sitting-Steve—not standing-Akanni—who’s threatening to destabilize the boat.

Steve watches carefully and absorbs everything he’s seeing. Akanni keeps up a running commentary the entire day, telling Steve why he’s moving in a certain way, if he’s putting more pressure on his heels or his toes, what type of fish they’ve caught, where certain fish are easier to catch, where the current is strongest and how to steer.

The man has never gone to school in his life and he has a better understanding of physics and ecology than most people. He’s one of the most intelligent people Steve has ever met.

Steve soaks up every morsel of information and carefully does not move. The few times Steve has to relieve himself, Akanni steers them to the bank and helps Steve step out. The others can all relieve themselves while standing in the boats, but that’s a skill Steve is probably many years away from mastering.

On the third day, Akanni tells Steve he’s not coming with them. Steve will stay at the village with one of the spare boats and he’s going to practice paddling around and getting his balance. If Steve flips the boat and loses it down the river, Steve will have to go get it or he’ll have to make a new boat.

Steve knows there’s a very big chance that he’ll flip the boat at least a few times, so he spends the evening weaving a rope out of dried river grass he’d prepared. He attaches one end to the boat and keeps the other tied around his wrist.

He’s also going to need help watching the river. He knows he’s going to spend a lot of time in the water, and he has no desire to be alone with crocodiles when he’s in there.

He enlists some river guards—there is no shortage of volunteers when he explains why he needs them to come watch him by the river—and he makes a fool out of himself for several hours. Everybody suddenly seems to have nothing better to do than watch Steve try to get into the boat, paddle in a straight line and flip the boat a dozen times when he overbalances or steers the wrong way. The current is vicious and Steve ends up sweating buckets and having to take frequent breaks because of the constant fight against the water. But at least his rope tether keeps him connected to the boat, which saves him from having to chase it down the river.

Finally, one of the young boys watching him tells him he’s doing it wrong. He shouldn’t fight the current all the time—he should use it to get to where he wants to go.

Once the others see that Steve really does need help, they wade into the water and demonstrate the concepts Akanni had explained to him, moving his hands and the paddle in certain ways and yelling instructions when they push him back off shore.

It takes days of practice until Steve is feeling confident enough to try standing up in the boat, and each time he falls in, his rope tether saves the boat from floating away.

Eventually he’s allowed to join Akanni again and this time he’s allowed to help pull in nets, sort fish and paddle.

He doesn’t have his own boat so he doesn’t go with Akanni all the time. He likes helping out in the village so he splits his time between the two sets of responsibilities.

*             *             *

Steve gets so accustomed to his life’s new routine that when two young girls come running through the village, shouting about a ‘foreigner’ looking for Steve, he doesn’t stop what he’s doing, because nobody could possibly be looking for him.

But when the girls run right up to him and repeat their frantic message, he realizes they’re serious.

“A foreigner? White like me?”

They both nod frantically. “A woman,” one of the girls says.

“She has hair like fire,” says the other one.

A smile immediately spreads over Steve’s face.

Of course she found him. Of _course_ she did.

The girls grab his hand and start pulling him in the direction of the road. He untangles his hand and tells them he needs to get his spear and his water bottle. He never walks away from the village without both of those things.

He retrieves the items he needs and follows the girls. As they pass a village council member’s home, the woman sticks her head out the door and gives Steve a stern look. “Don’t bring any strangers here without discussing it with council first.”

“I know, don’t worry.”

He follows the pathway through the forest, not really letting himself believe that Natasha is really here.

But when he comes out of the trees and steps on the road, there she is.

She’s leaning against the bus stop pole with a motorcycle next to her.

He stops and just stares. His former and current lives are colliding. “Nat? Are you seriously standing there or am I hallucinating?”

She smirks. “You really think you’re speaking English right now, don’t you?” She shakes her head. “You’ve always been a special one, Rogers. Thank God for this tooth thing I’ve got jammed in my ear. Come here and hug me and then you’ll know if I’m a hallucination or not.”

He stumbles the last few feet towards her, kicking up dust as he goes. As soon as he’s close enough, he reaches out and pulls her into his arms.

She holds him tight and kisses him on the cheek.

The two girls who had followed him giggle and point.

Natasha smacks him lightly on the butt and releases him. She wrinkles her nose. “You do know you stink, right?”

He laughs. Before he responds, he makes the mental switch to English in his head. “Yeah, I know. Bathing ain’t a high priority out here. Do I smell like fish?”

“And camp fire. And sweat. And pi—”

“Okay, okay. I got it. At least I’m fitting in nicely.”

She laughs and points at the beard that’s slowly taking over his face. “I see you’re really embracing the whole living-off-the-land idea.”

“The beard has to do with laziness more than authenticity. Most people around here don’t grow much facial hair. I’m insanely jealous of them.” He squints at the bike. “How the hell did you find me?”

She chuckles. “It wasn’t easy. If T’Challa hadn’t given me a hint, you would officially be the first person in my entire life who I couldn’t find.”

“You hacked his communication stone?”

“Yup.”

He laughs. “God, I’ve missed you, Nat.”

She smiles. “So, can I see where you’re living or am I not allowed?”

He makes a face. “It would be a hassle. I’d have to get permission from the village council and they’ll make a big deal out of it. It’s easier if we just stay here. But if you’re planning on visiting in the future, let me know ahead of time and I can get permission.”

She looks hesitant. “I don’t want to make things difficult for you—”

Steve waves a hand. “You won’t. I’ll vouch for you and tell them you’ll be respectful. I’ll give you everything you need so nobody’s bothered. It’ll be fine, I just need to know ahead of time.”

“Okay.” She sits down on the dirt road and leans against the bus stop pole. Steve sits down next to her and offers her his water bottle. She waves it away and unzips her backpack. “I’ve got food and water.”

“You came well prepared.”

“When T’Challa said you were living in the wilderness, I didn’t really get it, until I got here and looked around.”

“Yup. We’re living off the land. Literally. The only things we have that we don’t get from the land ourselves is what we trade for with neighboring villages.”

“No running water?”

“No. Don’t need it. We got the river.”

“No power?”

“None at all. Don’t need that either.”

She shakes her head, a smile on her face. “I’m impressed, Rogers.”

He shrugs. “Don’t be. I’ve spent most of my life with no power or running water. This is just a little more extreme than what I grew up with, but it’s actually easier. Making my own things and getting my own supplies is way easier than trying to find a job and make decent money so I can buy the things I need. It’s hard work, but every second of work gives me something I can use for myself.”

She shakes her head and bites her lip. “I’ve felt like an idiot since I heard where you went. When T’Challa told me how happy you are now, I started kicking myself.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s so _obvious_. You were uncomfortable with the world you’d woken up in and I never knew how to make it better for you. I’ve talked to lots of old people who grew up when you did, and they’ve all said the same thing: keeping up with the technology changes was really hard, and most of them stopped trying. They basically shut out the rest of the world and made their own world with the things they were comfortable with. And it was a million times worse for you, because you didn’t live through the slow change, plus, you were thrown into the middle of working for SHIELD and you had no choice but to deal with modern life and everything that came with it. I mean, you went from not having running water to having to deal with a cellphone and the internet.”

“It—it was a lot. I won’t lie.”

“I feel like I should have known. I should have found you a little cabin in the woods and helped you get used to things slower.”

He shakes his head and reaches over to turn her face towards him. “Nat. That wasn’t your responsibility. It was mine. I never said: Hey, stop, I’m uncomfortable, I’m unhappy, I need a change. I just kept letting the current push me along until it broke me into small pieces. I finally put my foot down and started putting myself together, but none of that is your fault or your responsibility. You were my friend when nobody else wanted to be my friend. You saved my life back then. You were literally the only bright, good thing I had when I came out of the ice. And that’s more than enough.”

She stares at him for a long while. “Really? You don’t blame us?”

“I might blame SHIELD a little bit. They should have been more aware of how things were affecting me—or at least, they should have tried harder to _ask_ if things were affecting me—but I don’t really blame anyone but myself. I’m a grown man, I should have said something much earlier. But let’s stop talking about sad things. What have you been up to lately?”

She fills him in on what she’s been doing in the US and abroad. She’s self-employed now, only accepting the contracts she wants and believes in. It gives her time to do the things she’s always wanted to do.

“Like find old friends living in the middle of nowhere in a small African country?”

“Exactly. So T’Challa says Bucky’s doing okay.”

Steve tells her about his monthly visits and how they are still holding out hope that T’Challa’s going to find a way to remove the trigger words one day. “Until then, I’ll wait.”

They keep chatting, the conversation flowing as easily as it always has between them. The only other people Steve has ever felt at such ease with have been Bucky and Sam.

Eventually Steve squints up at the sun. “Nat, you should head back if you wanna make it back into the city before the sun goes down.”

She makes a grabby gesture with her hand. “Give me your communication stone.”

Steve pulls off the bracelet and hands it over. She fusses with it, tapping and rubbing it. Different lights blink on and off, making the dark stone glow. Steve has no idea what she’s doing until she hands it back.

She holds up her wrist where she’s got her own stone bracelet. “I’ve programmed in the sequence for my own stone. It’s exactly like a phone—tap in T’Challa’s sequence, or my sequence, depending on who you want to talk to. I’m bringing Sam a stone too, and he has his own sequence.”

Steve grins. “You’re awesome. Thanks, Nat. This means a lot.”

“Just because we’re living on opposite ends of the world doesn’t mean I’m gonna let our friendship fizzle, and Sam wants to keep in touch too. We both expect at least monthly phone calls, okay?”

“Deal. Show me how to do your and Sam’s phone numbers.”

When she’s shown him, she elbows him in the side. “So, T’Challa tells me you’re sketching again. Is that true?”

Steve smiles. “Yeah. They ain’t works of art or nothing, but I like doing it and he likes seeing pictures of everything.”

“Well, he’s not the only one, so if you feel like making copies of things, Sam and I would love to see what you’re doing.”

Steve thinks it over. He’d like that. He’d really like that. What he’d like even more—“Can—can I write you letters too? I know we’ll be talking over the stones, but—”

Natasha gives him a soft smile. “Of course you can write to us.”

But sending letters from out here comes with its own unique problems. Writing letters to Bucky is easy because the letters don’t actually go anywhere. “How am I supposed to send the letters?”

“Just bring them to the palace when you visit. T’Challa will take care of it for you.”

Steve smiles. “Okay. Thanks, Nat.”

He thinks she’ll say something like ‘Why are you thanking me? You’re the one who’s going to be writing the letters’, but instead, she smiles. The smile isn’t mocking, it’s kind. “You’re welcome, Steve.”

She seems to know what this means to him.

*             *             *

When Steve gets back to his tent, he pulls out his plastic bag bundles from his backpack. He’s got dozens of sketches now, all of which he’s shown to T’Challa and are now just waiting for Bucky.

He lays them out in his tent and picks his favourites:

Urbi and Akanni sitting in front of their home, laughing over something while eating dinner.

The monkey mother high up in the trees with three little ones hanging off her back and tail.

A village council elder sitting amongst piles of dried river grass in front of her home, weaving a beautifully patterned mat to welcome a young woman who was marrying into the village.

The hustle and bustle of market day: people, animals, food and baskets all over the place. Steve can almost hear the noise coming off the paper.

When he’s picked his favourites, he realizes he didn’t pick any pictures of himself. He frowns and looks through the pictures.

He hasn’t drawn a single picture of himself yet.

Shit.

He knows Sam and Natasha will fuss—and Bucky will fuss the most.

But he doesn’t want to draw himself in his dingy little patched-up tent. The tent still protects him from wind, rain and predators, but it’s not too nice to look at any more.

Instead, he draws himself fishing with Akanni on the river.

He writes: ‘Learning from the best’ on the back.

Then he realizes he was part of that scene where Urbi and Akanni were laughing over something. They were laughing over something Steve had done during the day. This was from his early days in the village, so that was a common occurrence. He doesn’t remember what blunder he’d committed that day, but he remembers he’d been laughing right along with them, so he belongs in that scene too.

He adds himself into the picture and writes: ‘Eating dinner with good friends’ on the back.

He looks at his wooden calendar sitting in the corner of his tent. He has fifteen days before he’s due to visit T’Challa and Bucky. Which means he has fifteen days to make copies of his favourite sketches and write letters.

He pulls out his stacks of letters which he’d written to Bucky and picks the best parts to copy into letters to Sam and Natasha. There are a lot of jokes which he includes in Bucky’s letters that reference their childhoods and the time period they grew up in, which he thinks Natasha and Sam won’t appreciate, so he leaves those for Bucky.

When he starts writing his letter to Sam, he realizes he should speak to village council about this first. Bucky’s letters stay in the village, but Sam and Natasha’s letters will be going half way around the world, containing information about the village. Steve doesn’t want to embarrass or disrespect anyone.

Obasi is busy but Steve thinks it’s a small enough issue that he can ask one of the other elders. He asks her if it’s alright to send pictures and letters about the village and the day-to-day life of the villagers to his friends who live far away.

She doesn’t seem to understand that ‘far away’ means further than the neighboring country (she keeps telling him to request permission for his friends to visit instead), but when she starts to understand what Steve is trying to tell her, her priorities shift.

“Your friends who will see the pictures and your writing, will they treat them with respect?”

Steve knows she isn’t just asking if Sam and Natasha will treat the papers themselves with respect, but if they’ll treat the contents with respect.

“Absolutely. They might show them to other people, but they’ll expect those other people to behave respectfully. I promise, nobody will be disrespected.”

She gives Steve permission, so when it’s time to visit Bucky, Steve carefully packs the new sketches he’d drawn (to show T’Challa), his copied sketches and the letters into his leather bag and heads off to the palace.

*             *             *

When Steve has been living in the village for about a year, he asks the village council for permission to make his own boat. He wants to contribute more than just being an extra pair of hands. He wants to actually increase the amount of resources that are coming into the village.

He’s good at going out into the forest and finding plants and fruit. He can prepare medicines and weave things. But he’s constantly having to trade for fish and he’d like to get his own.

When he tells Akanni he’s planning to ask village council for permission to make his own boat, Akanni tells him he still has more to learn before he can fish by himself.

He spends several days making sure Steve knows how to identify different kinds of fish—everything from big juicy Kapsa to the small oily Suru—and explaining that Steve’s role as a fisherman comes with a big set of responsibilities. Not only does he need to catch enough fish to take care of himself and contribute to the rest of the village, but he needs to make sure his fishing keeps the different fish populations stable. There is a quota for different kinds of fish, which changes during the seasons. Kapsa is available all year round, whereas Suru only come up the river once a year—an event which is followed by the annual Suru Festival.

Steve needs to monitor how many fish and what kind of fish he keeps during a day and he also needs to track how many small ones he’s throwing back and what kind they are.

Once a month, all the fishermen meet with village council and discuss the status of the fish in the river: what species are in abundance and need to be fished more to keep the population stable, which ones are in danger, if any new species have been spotted and if any unusual predators have been seen swimming in the river or walking on the banks.

Maintaining the crocodile population is a whole other situation, one which Steve gladly leaves to the others for now.

The more space that remains between Steve and those vicious creatures, the happier he remains.

Obasi and the rest of the council meets with other village councils a few times a year to discuss the status of various resources and how to keep things moving along smoothly.

When Akanni decides that Steve is ready, he accompanies Steve to Obasi’s home where Steve asks for permission to make his own boat. Obasi is no fool: he asks Steve detailed questions about quotas and fishing procedures, and asks Akanni to vouch for Steve’s ability to be a responsible fisherman.

Steve reassures the village council leader that he will take his role seriously and he’ll treat the river, everything in it and his fellow fishermen with respect.

Obasi does what he usually does: he gives Steve a long, hard look as if he can see right into Steve’s heart and soul and decide for himself whether Steve is being honest or not.

As is usually the case, Obasi decides he likes what he sees.

Steve gets permission to build his own boat.

The next time the men have a day off from fishing to chop down logs for firewood, they also cut down a tree which will become Steve’s boat.

One of the older men in the village agrees to teach Steve how to make the boat in exchange for Steve cooking his meals for him and doing his laundry for the duration of the boat carving.

It takes three months until Steve’s boat is ready. Every week, he makes four sketches of his boat. Two copies are included in his monthly letters to Natasha and Sam and one of them goes into a pile which he brings to the palace to give to T’Challa on his monthly visits to see Bucky. The King has been tracking Steve’s progress with his boat with much interest. He’s learned about traditional boat carving in lectures, but he’s never seen somebody actually do it.

The last one stays in the plastic bags in his backpack, ready to be shown to Bucky when he comes out of cryo.

The first time he pulls in his own net and it’s filled with fish which are almost all keepers, he nearly bursts into tears he’s so proud of himself.

“Oh, my God. Buck, if you could see this. Look at what I’m _doing_!”

He fishes until he’s reached his quota, which means he needs three people to help him bring the fish from the boat to the village. He gives most of them to the village council and still ends up eating so much that can barely drag himself into his tent, but it’s worth it.

He calls T’Challa, even though he’d talked to him just two days prior and tells him what he’d accomplished.

T’Challa is speechless for about a minute before he starts laughing and congratulating Steve.

Then Steve sits down and sketches a picture of himself fishing in his boat, surrounded by the other fishermen, basing it off his memories of the day. When he’s done, he works on making copies of it for Natasha and Sam.

Lastly, he draws a picture of himself sitting amongst the four baskets of fish he’d brought in. He writes on it: ‘I’ve never touched this much food before in my life!’ and keeps that picture in a plastic bag in his backpack. Bucky will appreciate that picture more than the others will.

That evening, he stays up way too late writing down all the details about his day in a letter to Bucky. Eventually it’s gets dark but he stays outside, coaxing his fire back to life whenever it burns too low for him to see what he’s writing.

He wants to make sure he gets all the details recorded so Bucky will experience all of them too.

Before he goes to sleep, he grins up at Bucky’s picture.

“I’m a fisherman now, Buck! I’m proud of myself and I know you’ll be proud of me too. I love you. Have a good night.”

*             *             *

The village has big get-togethers twice a month. One get-together takes place after market day. Everyone brings some of their newly acquired bush meat to the enormous communal fire pit in the center of the village and everyone cooks bush meat, shares stories about their day and shows off the things they have acquired.

The other get-together is done after the monthly village meetings. Everybody gets together once the men have returned from fishing and the meeting is conducted prior to dinner.

Village council will share what news they have from other villages, the status of various animals and plants in the forest and river, and news of any communal tasks around the village which will need to be done over the next month.

Then everybody else is invited to bring up topics they wish to share. If somebody needs help repairing their home, or if somebody is caring for a sick or injured family member, they can ask for assistance. People will volunteer to help them with certain tasks, and schedules are decided on. If somebody has items they wish to trade within the village, or if they’re looking for a particular item, the meetings are the best place to ask.

Steve mostly stays quiet during meetings, listening and learning and keeping his opinions to himself. When he starts fishing by himself, he starts attending the special fishermen meeting as well, but except for giving his report, he stays quiet there too.

It isn’t until he’s at a meeting where everybody is discussing the lack of mangos in the nearby grove that Steve realizes he actually has something to contribute. Steve isn’t sure if it’s right for him to interrupt the discussion, so he leans over to Akanni and whispers that he’d found mangos two days ago. Not in the grove, but closer to the road. By the big monkey tree.

Akanni gives him an impressed look, then yells for quiet and gestures for Steve to speak.

It’s the first time Steve speaks in Wakandan in front of everybody. It’s nerve wracking, but once everybody realizes he knows where to find mangos, everybody’s listening to him. He surprises himself even more when he’s able to describe exactly where he found them.

When he’s finished, Urbi gives him several happy jabs with her elbow. “Not bad, foreigner. Not bad,” she whispers, her eyes sparkling.

Steve can’t get the smile off his face for hours. That’s definitely something that he’ll put into Bucky’s letter tonight.

After the meeting, everybody usually goes to get dinner supplies and comes back to the large fire to cook dinner, relax and chat.

It’s one of Steve’s favourite times of the month.

At first he’d always stayed quiet and out of the way. He’d sat with Urbi or Akanni and quietly cooked his food and listened to the conversations around him.

But when he gets more confident speaking Wakandan, and the villagers accept him more, Steve starts to come out of his shell.

A teenage boy, Amu, is telling a story about how hard he’d worked to catch a Yetu, which is a big, vicious water creature. They’re incredibly fast and are hard to catch. So far Steve’s never bothered trying to catch them. Amu is telling everyone how hard he’d worked to spear it and pull it into his boat—which is all true, but he’s leaving out the part where he’d fallen out of his boat during his exuberant celebrations.

Steve listens to the story, exchanging indulgent smiles with other fishermen. It’s clear the boy is trying to impress the girls who are hanging onto every word he’s saying.

The Yetu seems to grow in size as the story progresses and Amu makes no mention of how his celebrations had ended.

An older fisherman is chewing on his dinner and watching the boy. When the story seems to have ended, the older man pipes up, his eyes sparkling. “So, are you not going to tell them you fell out of your boat because you were celebrating too much?”

Everybody starts talking and yelling, poking each other and asking the boy if that’s true.

Amu’s eyes are very wide. “I—I—”

The old fisherman, Jelani, licks his fingers. “I have a witness. Steve? Did he fall in?”

Steve struggles to contain his laughter. “I’m sorry, Amu. But, yes, you did. And it was very funny. Very, very funny. But!” Steve holds up his hand to quell the laughter that had risen. “But, he did catch the Yetu, all by himself and he got it into his boat by himself. It was a big accomplishment and anybody would be proud to do that.” Steve gives the old fisherman a look. “You want to share the last time you caught a Yetu by yourself, Jelani?”

That makes Jelani close his mouth, and everybody erupts into laughter again. There’s also a lot of congratulations being directed Amu’s way, and the girls seem suitably impressed again.

People are finished their dinner and Steve can see a crowd gathering behind him. Mostly children, but some grown-ups too.

He smiles at them. “Go ahead. I’m done eating.”

The children scamper forward, jostling for position, hands reaching out for Steve’s hair. Steve relaxes, letting them play with his hair and his beard. They’re always gentle and they talk to each other in hushed tones as if they’re doing something very special and secretive.

Steve can hear them saying “It’s so soft!” and “It’s shiny like a fish!”. Eventually some grown-ups join them and Steve has multiple hands in his hair and his beard, touching and exploring. He doesn’t mind them braiding his hair and weaving grass into it, but if anybody gets too rough, he has to remind them that he’s attached to the hair and that hurts.

Sometimes Urbi will turn around and wave some kids away like they’re flies, insisting there are too many of them, and Steve isn’t a monkey on display.

He listens to more stories: funny adventures which people had during the day, old stories which are too funny to ever be forgotten (Steve’s first days learning how to paddle a boat and his first attempts at eating insects come up often), and children tales.

He likes those best.

One of his favourites is about Dada the monkey who makes an agreement with Siltu the snake to trade bananas for Siltu’s assistance to fix Dada’s house. Siltu takes the bananas but then refuses to help Dada. Since Siltu broke the agreement, Siltu is banished from the forest forever.

The stories are a great way for Steve to learn more about the village and its culture, and Wakandan culture overall.

When Steve is comfortable speaking Wakandan, inevitably somebody will always start demanding: “Steve, tells us Bucky stories!”

And: “Yes, time for a Brook’Lyn story!”

Steve will ask if anybody wants to hear a particular story again, or if they want a new one. Sometimes a story will feature something the villagers are completely unfamiliar with—radios, picture houses, baseball—so Steve will ask one of the kids to get his art supplies and he’ll sketch a quick picture of what he’s talking about.

He often gets the request to tell the story of how he and Bucky had met. How seven year-old Steve had been picked on by some older boys at school and how eight year-old Bucky had stepped in to help. They had both been beaten up by the older boys, but they’d stumbled to Steve’s home and his ma had cleaned them up, and they’d been inseparable ever since.

Another favourite story features teenage Steve and Bucky sneaking onto the subway train and riding it down to Coney Island where they spent the day sneaking onto rides and pooling their few pennies together for a hot dog to share. That story had required multiple sketches the first few times Steve had told it, but by now the villagers are familiar with what the train and carnival rides are.

There’s one memorable day when Steve is telling the story for the hundredth time and one of the older villagers frowns and asks what the ferris wheel is.

Before Steve starts drawing it for the hundredth time, Urbi shoots the man an unimpressed look. “That’s the big circle one! The one that brings you up to the top of the trees and down again, in a circle.” She’s waving her arms in a circle while she explains.

Steve finds that explanation hilarious but everyone else seems to be taking it very seriously, nodding at Urbi’s explanation and making similar hand gestures, so Steve keeps his laughter to himself.

It really means the world to him that they pay attention and appreciate his stories.

And it always makes him feel better to know that he’s sharing Bucky’s life with them too. The only person in the entire country who really knows Bucky is Steve, and that has always made Steve sad. Now, an entire village is getting to know Bucky Barnes before they’ve even met him.

Getting to share his own life with people who care about him is amazing, and getting to share the life of the man he loves with people who care about Bucky despite never having met him is even more amazing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

The next time he visits the palace, he’s surprised when one of the guards comes hurrying out to meet him when he sees Steve walking towards him.

“Hello, Madu. What—”

“Mr. Rogers! The King has been waiting for you. He’s very excited to see you.”

Steve’s heart fearfully skips a beat. “Is it Bucky?!” He’d just spoken to T’Challa last night, surely he would have told Steve if—

“No, no, it has nothing to do with Mr. Barnes. I’m sorry for concerning you. It’s a surprise his Majesty has for you. He didn’t want to tell you yesterday. He wants you to see it in person. Please, come with me.”

He follows the guard down the corridors. Madu is walking so fast they’re almost jogging. As is always the case when he steps into the palace, he realizes how badly he smells.

“Uh, I should really have a shower before—”

“After, Mr. Rogers. After you see the surprise. His Majesty insisted.”

Okay.

They make it to T’Challa’s private rooms where Steve usually has lunch with him during the visits. As soon as Madu flings the door open and gestures him inside, Steve can see T’Challa sitting at his desk.

He grins as soon as he sees them. “Steve! I’m so happy you’re here! Thank you, Madu.”

Madu bows and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“Uh, T’Challa, I should really have a shower before—”

T’Challa waves that away. “After. If you want, you don’t have to sit down, but go look at the table. There’s a surprise for you.”

Steve steps up to the table and sees there are two envelopes.

Both of them have his name on them and the handwriting on both envelopes is familiar.

Oh, my God—they actually—!

He looks at T’Challa, who’s smiling and gesturing. “Go ahead. They have your name on them. They’re for you.”

He tears open both envelopes, wanting to confirm what he already knows.

One contains a letter and a small stack of photos from Sam, and the other contains two postcards from Natasha.

Steve wants to read them immediately, but he’s becoming even more aware of how badly he smells. “T’Challa, I really should—”

The King gestures at his open balcony door. “Sit out there if it makes you more comfortable.”

Steve hurries outside, the letters and photos clutched in his hands.

He sinks down on the small patch of decorative grass that each balcony has and immediately starts reading.

Natasha’s sent him one postcard from Turkey, where she had a job. She tells him what food she’d tried and she describes visiting the old temple which is shown on the postcard.

The other postcard has the Brooklyn Bridge on it.

Steve doesn’t even have to read the label to recognize it. For the first time in months, intense homesickness washes over him—not just a longing for Brooklyn, but _his_ Brooklyn from _his_ time.

Natasha writes:

_‘I got back to New York three days ago and I thought you’d appreciate seeing a little piece of home. Thankfully, this bridge of yours is on almost every postcard sold in New York tourist shops, so it wasn’t hard to find. I’m writing this sitting by the East River, looking at the real bridge and I swear I can see your skinny little butt running around here, Bucky running after you and telling you to quit running so hard because of your asthma.’_

Steve feels tears brimming his eyes. It means the world to him that Natasha gets what he misses about Brooklyn. Not just the place, not just the time, but the whole life he and Bucky had left behind when they left for war.

There’s no way to get back to that life, so the life he’s living today is the best alternatives for him to find peace, but he’ll always miss Brooklyn.

He’s glad Natasha deliberately doesn’t mention anything about modern-day Brooklyn.

She tells him she loves the pictures and letters he sends and she reminds him to give her a call on Tuesday.

He spends a long time looking at Natasha’s postcards before he starts on Sam’s letter.

Sam tells him how his job is going, about his family, his girlfriend, and about DC. A lot of it is stuff Sam has already told Steve during their phone calls, but Steve loves reading about it on the paper.

Sam has included a few pictures of himself and his family, labelling who everybody is on the back of it. It’s nice connecting the names of people Sam’s talked about to their faces.

Steve reads the letter again and spends a long time staring down at his precious collection of papers.

His heart is so full and he feels a few tears escape and trickle into his beard before he wipes them away. Just the thought of his friends loving him enough to spend the time hand-writing their words, preparing the photographs, putting everything into envelopes and mailing them to the other side of the world so Steve could get them fills him with such gratitude.

All those activities are so archaic and time consuming in the modern world, but they’re all activities which are familiar and cherished by Steve.

And his friends know that.

He takes a shuddering breath.

It would be the same as Bucky writing a letter using a feather quill and ink pot and having to stop every few words to blot the ink dry. He’d do it purely out of his love for Steve—which is the same reason Sam and Natasha have taken the time to hand-write their letters.

A shadow falls over him and T’Challa crouches next to him. “Are they letters from Sam and Natasha?”

Steve manages to nod, still crying.

T’Challa reaches over and squeezes Steve’s shoulder. “I know Bucky is the most important person in your world, Steve, but don’t forget you have other friends who love you and care for you deeply.”

Steve sniffs and looks at the King. “Including you. I wouldn’t be able to send or get any letters if it weren’t for you, and you’re the one who gives me the bags to keep the papers safe.”

T’Challa smiles gently. “It’s a small thing to do for a good friend, Steve. Besides, you’re helping to maintain my kingdom’s ecosystem and preserving our traditional way of life. Giving you bags to protect your papers and being your post office are small things to do in return.”

Steve snorts through a shuddering breath, wiping his eyes. “You do a lot more than that and you know it. You’ve been keeping Bucky alive for more than a year.”

“And we will continue doing so as long as it takes until we find a cure for him. To me, that has nothing to do with our friendship. But if you insist on connecting the two, then I will say you can definitely give me more in return by going to have a shower before joining me for lunch.”

Steve laughs, already feeling less vulnerable. “I can do that.”

*             *             *

When Steve’s been in the village for about a year and a half, he goes to see Obasi the day before he’s leaving to visit Bucky again.

He finds the old man sitting at his fire pit and has a seat on his usual log.

“Steve. How are you?”

Steve nods. “Good, good. Had a good day. We finished repairing Taiwo’s house today.”

“Oh, the roof is back on?”

“Yes. It’s all done.”

“Excellent. Well done.”

Steve smiles. Praise from the head of village council always feels good. “Thank you. I’m going to visit Bucky tomorrow.”

“Of course. Remind him we all wish him well.”

Steve smiles. It’s always incredibly touching to be faced with the villagers’ affection for Bucky, despite them not having met him yet. He’s heard some whispers here and there—people wondering exactly what Steve’s relationship with Bucky is—but he’s always been careful to let everybody in the village know that what he shares with Bucky is a deep friendship and nothing more.

At first, he just wanted to be careful admitting his love for another man. Urbi and Akanni didn’t seem to mind, but Steve wasn’t so sure about the rest of the villagers, especially village council.

But then he’d realized that the two older women who live together in the house two doors down from Urbi and Akanni actually aren’t sisters—so that made him realize his love for a man would probably be accepted.

The village population has to remain stable, but having a few homosexual couples in each village won’t decimate the population. Anyway, it turned out that the two older women had raised several children over the years, mostly orphans from their own or neighboring villages, or children who couldn’t be cared for in their own villages any more. Many of those children are still in the village today.

So homosexual relationships aren’t taboo in their culture, but that doesn’t change the fact that Steve is not technically in a homosexual relationship.

He would like to be in one, but he isn’t.

Telling anybody that he and Bucky are in a romantic relationship would be a lie and a betrayal to Bucky.

Steve is more certain than ever that he will love Bucky for the rest of his life and he will definitely tell him when he’s out of cryo, but he has no idea if Bucky feels the same way.

When Bucky wakes up, Steve will tell him how he feels, and whether or not Bucky feels the same way, Steve knows they’ll be happy living in the village together. Even if Bucky will never feel anything more than deep friendship and platonic affection towards Steve, he wouldn’t allow Steve’s love for him to destroy their relationship.

Steve knows that for sure. His love for Bucky has been unreciprocated for nearly thirty years and he’s grown used to it. He can keep doing it for the next sixty years as long as he has Bucky near him.

He knows that Bucky will understand that losing Bucky permanently would hurt Steve much more than not being able to have a romantic relationship with him.

That all means he really doesn’t want to put Bucky into an awkward position or betray him by lying about their relationship to the villagers.

He hasn’t told anybody other than Urbi and Akanni how he really feels about Bucky, but Steve suspects a lot of them know. He can feel his heart glowing whenever he talks about Bucky and he knows he gets a ridiculous smile on his face. He can’t keep his love for that man off his face, no matter how much time passes.

“Tell him we are all thinking of him.”

“I will.”

“And Steve?”

“Yes?”

“When you’re back, what do you think about having your own house built?”

Steve stares at him. He almost falls off his log. His thoughts about Bucky grind to a halt. “Are you—are you serious?”

Obasi smiles. “That old tent of yours will fall apart despite your excellent patching skills, and it’s really time you had a true home, don’t you think?”

“Am I—am I allowed to call this my home?”

Obasi’s smile widens. “It’s been your home for a while, Steve. You are part of this village and I know we are a part of you. Are you intending on leaving any time soon?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. The only thing that could force me to leave is if Bucky gets moved somewhere else, to another country. But there’s no reason to think that’ll happen.”

“And if Bucky recovers, do you think he’ll want to come live with you here?”

Steve blinks. “That’s—that’s—I know he will. He’ll want to be where ever I’m happy, and that means right here. And I know he’d be happy here. The only question is whether you’d let him stay here.”

“Council would have to discuss it first, and we’d have to meet Bucky and decide for ourselves what kind of person he is.”

“Of course.”

“But I was serious about your house, Steve. I’ll let everybody know and once you’re back, we’ll get going.”

*             *             *

They build Steve’s home right next to the spot where he’s had his tent for the last year and a half. Steve does a lot of the work himself, but he’s using bricks which were made by the rest of the village, and he gets help making his roof and putting it up. Whenever people have time to spare, they jump in and help him move things along.

Urbi spends a lot of time sitting on a stump stool and directing Steve, informing him when his bricks aren’t laid level and which bundles of grass are poor quality: “Foreigner, is everything crooked in your old country? Because I don’t think you know how to make straight lines.”, “You think that’s a bundle, foreigner? My grandmother could make a better bundle and she isn’t even living anymore. Use that other one. No, Steve, not that one—that one over there. Yes, that one. Good.”

Steve accepts most of her comments gladly, but when she gets that smirk on her face and says things that are just plain wrong, Steve will take the time to throw a bundle of grass at her, covering her with the scratchy, dry stalks.

When he’s done the house, he moves his few possessions into it and now that he’s got more room, he acquires more things and makes new things. He makes larger baskets so he can keep a larger stock of supplies, he makes larger mats and builds a permanent fire pit in the corner and fashions a hook that he can hang pots from. He’d used some larger bricks when building the walls, which jut out and are sturdy shelves he can put things on.

Like he’d done with his boat, he sketches the progress of building his house so he can share it with Sam, Natasha, T’Challa and of course, Bucky. Every evening he writes a letter for Bucky, detailing what he’d done and what’s still left to do.

He puts his wooden calendar on one of the shelves, along with his pocket watch and little interesting things he finds in the forest or in the river—beautifully colored rocks, unusual insects, wood that he carves into different animals. T’Challa gives him a box full of plastic bags so he can put his favourite sketches into individual bags and pin them up using fish bones. He loves going to sleep and waking up with pictures of Bucky and his ma looking down on him.

He’s including his ma in his nightly ritual now. He tells both her and Bucky that he loves them, one at a time, and blows them each a kiss.

It’s homey and wonderful.

He loves sitting in his doorway, watching the beautiful sunset, or finding ways to keep himself useful and busy when it’s pouring rain out. The canopy protects most of the village during the frequent bouts of torrential downpour they have, but Steve’s close enough to the river that the trees don’t offer much protection. Usually everybody cooks outside—it’s safer and keeps the air quality better in the house—but when it’s raining, everyone uses indoor fire pits. His home is watertight and wonderful, and Steve can sit on his mat, eating lunch while carving a new ax, weaving a new basket to trade or writing a letter to Bucky, all while the rain is pouring down right outside the door, turning the river bank to mud.

And because fate is smiling down on him these days, exactly three days after he’s put his finishing touches on a new grass bed, T’Challa contacts him to tell him they’ve found a way to remove Bucky’s triggers.

*             *             *

Steve bursts into tears the second he understands what T’Challa is saying. He makes him repeat it twice, thinking he’s not translating what T’Challa’s saying correctly.

“Steve, I promise, you’re understanding me correctly. Do you want me to switch to English?”

Most of their conversations these days are done entirely in Wakandan. Steve practices English when he’s speaking to Natasha and Sam. Both of them often stop him midsentence when he’s using too many Wakandan words.

“No—no, Wakandan is fine. Really?? Are you serious? Absolutely serious? You can remove the triggers?”

“Yes, Steve. I wouldn’t tell you unless I was sure. We’ve already begun the process of waking Bucky, but it’ll be several days until the procedure is done. We’re going to stabilize him first, but we’ll keep him in a semi-conscious state until we’ve removed the triggers and done testing.”

“You started already?!”

“We’ve moved him from a cryogenic state to a vegetative state. We’re going to keep him like this for a few days until we’ve verified that he’s stable, and then we’ll increase his consciousness level only to the point where we can do the procedure. He won’t wake up completely until everything is done.”

“But he’ll wake up?”

“Yes. And hopefully the triggers will have been taken care of, and he’ll be feeling alright. We’re going to monitor everything at all times, Steve. It’ll be fine.”

“I—I’m going to be there tomorrow. Oh! The bus isn’t running tomorrow. The Suru Festival doesn’t end until after tomorrow.”

T’Challa makes a soothing sound. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing will change for Bucky for the next three days. Go to the festival, enjoy yourself and know that it’ll be the last festival that you have to spend without Bucky by your side. When it’s done, catch the bus and come see him. We’ll be waiting for you. There’s no rush.”

“Okay. He—okay.” Then Steve bursts into tears again.

He’s going to get Bucky back.

_He’s going to get Bucky back!_

He turns off the stone and stumbles out of his house towards Urbi and Akanni’s home.

He’s still crying, so they both look alarmed when they see him. “Steve? What happened?”

He reaches them and Urbi grabs his hands and pulls him to sit on his usual stump stool.

She gives his hand an impatient shake. “Speak, foreigner. Quickly. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“They—they found a cure for Bucky.” Steve manages to choke out.

Her eyes widen. “Really? You’re not trying to be funny?”

He shakes his head. “I’d never—I’d _never_ joke about that, you know that. They—they really found a cure. And they’re going to heal him and then he’ll wake up and then—”

His throat closes up and he can’t finish the rest of his sentence.

Urbi is smiling and Akanni’s eyes are twinkling. The older man leans forward and squeezes Steve’s arm. “And then you’ll have your Bucky back. We’re very happy for you, Steve! Very happy. We can’t wait to meet him.”

*             *             *

Steve goes to the festival for its last day but he’s distracted the entire time. He finds Obasi and apologizes a million times for bringing up personal business during the festival, but it’s an unusual situation.

He explains that he has to leave for several days—possible several weeks—to help Bucky during his recovery. Steve will be back and he’ll bring Bucky to show him the village and to show the village Bucky.

Whatever happens after that, will happen.

But right now, Steve has to get to Bucky and make sure he’s okay.

Obasi squeezes his hand and nods. “Go, be with Bucky. Take care of him and make sure he is well looked after. We’re looking forward to finally meeting him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's gonna finally show up in the next chapter??? Are you excited? Cause I'm excited!


	7. Chapter 7

Two days later, Steve is making his way down the palace corridors to the medical wing. He had a lengthy debate with himself on the bus whether he should shower and give his hair and beard a final trim before seeing Bucky, but he got too anxious thinking about Bucky waking up without Steve being there.

He’ll shower once he’s checked on Bucky.

He hears somebody call out: “Excuse me, sir?” from behind him.

Steve turns around. “Yes?”

He recognizes the guard, but apparently Madu doesn’t recognize him. According to T’Challa, Madu has been on paternity leave so he hasn’t seen Steve in almost half a year. He’s frowning at Steve until he gets closer. Then his confusion turns to recognition. “Oh, Mr. Rogers! I didn’t recognize you. I apologize.”

Steve smiles. “That’s fine, Madu. No apologies necessary. I apologize, I didn’t have time to clean up yet. Welcome back.”

When he’s walking around in his hand-sewn clothes and hand-made leather sandals with his long hair and full beard, he knows he looks nothing like the type of man people in the palace are accustomed to seeing.

The guard smiles. “Thank you! Your Wakandan is so good now! You sound almost like a local.”

Steve laughs. He hasn’t even noticed that the guard had been speaking English to him and he’d been responding in Wakandan.

“You should tell that to my neighbor. She always makes fun of my foreigner accent.”

The guard laughs. “Well, I won’t keep you. I know this is an exciting time for Mr. Barnes. Good luck, and please wish him well.”

Steve smiles. “I will, Madu. Thank you.”

He continues to the medical wing. Unlike his usual visits, the place is a hive of activity.

The first thing he notices is that the cryo unit is empty and it’s been pushed to the side. Bucky is lying on an actual bed, covered with wires and IV lines. There are a dozen blinking machines around him, all monitoring different things.

T’Challa is standing amongst the medical staff, pointing at one of the read-outs. He notices Steve and hurries over to him.

“Steve! I’m happy you made it here so quickly. The festival finished well?”

Steve gives an embarrassed smile. “Honestly, it could have ended terribly and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was too distracted.”

T’Challa smiles kindly. “That’s understandable.” He gestures at Bucky. “Please, come see Bucky.”

Steve hurries up to the bed. Bucky looks peaceful and healthy. His chest is moving as he breathes and Steve can even see his eyes moving beneath his eyelids.

“He’s really sleeping, isn’t he? Not frozen.”

“Not exactly. He’s not truly sleeping—he’s in a comatose state, but he’s no longer frozen. His body systems are all functioning at normal levels. It’s only his brain that’s being kept at a lower level to keep him comatose.”

Steve reaches out and gently touches Bucky’s cheek. He feels warm and alive.

It’s the first time he’s touched Bucky in two years.

And soon Bucky’s going to open his eyes.

_Soon Bucky’s going to open his eyes!_

Steve clenches his jaw, feeling the excitement and emotions running through him. He feels tears brimming his eyes and he wipes at them, not wanting to cry in front of everyone.

He has no doubt he’ll cry a lot later, but he wants to control himself in front of the medical staff.

T’Challa looks excited too. “Once he’s awake and strong enough, I’ll talk to him about getting a prosthetic arm. We’ve already prepared some samples for him.”

That makes Steve even more emotional. “That—that’ll mean a lot to him.”

T’Challa squeezes his shoulder. “Please, have a seat over there,” he says, pointing at a nearby chair. “We need space to work, but you may stay and watch.”

Steve shuffles to the corner and has a seat in the chair.

It feels weird to sit on actual fabric. Steve shifts. It’s way too…squishy.

Then the doctors surround Bucky and start attaching some kind of device to his head, so Steve forgets all about the chair.

*             *             *

The doctors and T’Challa explain exactly what the device will do to help remove the triggers. Most of it is way over Steve’s head, but he feels better hearing that it’s not life-threatening and the risk to the rest of Bucky’s brain is low.

Once the device is on and working, everybody steps back.

Then…

…nothing else happens.

The device is blinking and the read-outs scroll past on a monitor, but there are no other changes.

A doctor sits at a desk and starts typing on a computer. Steve has no idea what she’s doing, but after several minutes of nothing happening except the typing, T’Challa stretches and looks at Steve.

“This will continue for at least two days. The doctors will work in shifts to remove the triggers slowly and carefully. There will always be two doctors present, one to work, and the other to monitor the work. You may stay here as long as you don’t touch Bucky, but you may also go to your former room and we will contact you if there is any change.”

Steve smiles. “I’d like to stay here for now.”

“That’s fine.”

*             *             *

T’Challa leaves to attend to business, and Steve stays in his chair, only getting up to use the bathroom.

Eventually a servant comes in and tells Steve his Majesty has invited him to eat lunch. He won’t keep Steve for long, but he wants to make sure Steve is eating properly.

It’s a very kind gesture—on top of all the kind gestures this amazing man has made for Steve and Bucky over the years—and Steve doesn’t hesitate to go. He knows T’Challa will be informed if anything changes with Bucky.

Then the servant looks very embarrassed and mutters that his Majesty has requested that Steve please shower before he comes to lunch.

“Oh, of course.” It hits him how bad he smells and he knows he must smell a lot worse to everybody else in the room.

He feels himself blush and glances at the two doctors by the computer and a nurse checking Bucky’s monitors. “I—I apologize everyone. Thank you for being so understanding and letting me stay while you got Bucky settled. I know I must smell terrible.”

The doctor sitting at the computer presses her lips together to hide a smile and the nurse adjusting Bucky’s blankets has an expression on her face that clearly shows Steve is stating the obvious.

He leans down beside Bucky and tells him he’s going to shower and eat lunch and he’ll be back right after. He was told Bucky can’t hear him, but Bucky hasn’t heard him for the past two years so it doesn’t make a difference to Steve.

When Steve’s sitting down at T’Challa’s table, he remembers he forgot to give T’Challa his present. This time, he brought him some fruit.

“I almost forgot. Here’s your present.” He pulls out two beautiful yellow Bombu from his bag and hands them to T’Challa.

T’Challa smiles and smells them. “Thank you, but you know I can buy Bombu any time I want here in the city. You didn’t have to carry them all this way.”

Steve rolls his eyes and smiles. “You can buy Bombu that was picked a week ago from a huge farm, frozen, stuffed into crates, driven through tunnels and then defrosted in stores—or you can eat this Bombu, which I picked right off the tree yesterday. The only way it could be any fresher is if you’d picked it yourself and eaten it in the village.”

T’Challa laughs. “Thank you, Steve. I will relish them.”

Steve grins. “You better. There was a goat that was very interested in my bag while we were on the bus. I protected the Bombu just so you could eat fresh fruit. The least you can do is relish them.”

That makes T’Challa laugh.

They tuck into lunch, then Steve makes his excuses to go back to sit with Bucky.

*             *             *

Steve tries reading on a small electronic reader one of the nurses gives him, but he’s too anxious to sit still for long. He paces outside of the medical wing a bit and gets up to check Bucky’s monitors way too many times, despite the fact that he can see them perfectly from his chair.

On the second day, Steve has been reassured that Bucky isn’t in any pain or danger, so he spends more time walking around and stretching his legs.

On the third day, Steve has only been sitting in the squishy chair for about an hour when the doctor at the computer smiles, leans back and tells him they’re done removing the triggers.

It’s time to wake Bucky up.

Steve gets so excited he thinks he’s gonna have a heart attack.

*             *             *

It takes an hour until the squiggly lines on Bucky’s monitors start looking more lively.

There’s no change with Bucky himself that Steve can see.

Steve appreciates the doctors’ caution—two years is a long time to be in cryo—and the delay gives him a chance to calm down. His heart eventually tires of being in such a state of heightened excitement and settles down.

The doctors have told Steve that Bucky will be very groggy, disoriented and sleepy, probably for several days. Steve doesn’t want to overwhelm him by being too emotional.

Finally, one of the doctors gestures for Steve to step closer. “Speak to him, Steve. Ask him to wake up. Use language he’d be familiar with.”

Steve stands next to Bucky and reaches out to hold Bucky’s hand, but stops himself and looks at the doctor. “Can I touch him?”

The doctor smiles. “Yes, just not any of the equipment.”

Steve gently takes Bucky’s hand and squeezes it. “Hello, Buck. Hi, friend. It’s Steve. It’s time to wake—”

The doctor shifts behind him. “Steve?”

“Yes?”

“I think it would help if you spoke to him in English, not Wakandan.”

Jesus Christ. Steve lets out a soft snort. “Yes, that would help.” He takes a breath, makes the mental switch and tries again. “Hey, Buck. Hi, buddy. It’s Steve. It’s time to wake up. You’re safe now—we’re all safe now and you can wake up. Everything’s okay, Buck, I promise.”

Steve keeps talking, gently stroking Bucky’s hand and watching his face and body for any signs of changes.

He thinks Bucky’s breathing gets slightly faster and deeper, and finally— _finally_ —Bucky’s eyes open a sliver.

They close again, then blink open a bit and fall shut again.

Steve keeps talking, and eventually Bucky’s eyes remain open for longer periods of time. He’s staring blankly up at the ceiling and it takes several minutes until he starts moving his eyes around.

Steve leans over him and Bucky’s roaming gaze settles on him for a second, but then slides away with no recognition.

“It’s me, Buck. It’s Steve. Your Stevie. Everything’s okay. Take your time.”

He has no idea if Bucky remembers where he is, so he doesn’t want to scare him with any references to things he might not remember.

Bucky keeps looking around, with a vacant, blank stare. Finally, he starts bringing his gaze back to Steve more frequently and looking at him for longer and longer periods of time. He opens his mouth and makes a sound in this throat.

“You’re doing so good, Buck. Take your time. Go slow. We’ve got all day.”

It takes another hour until Bucky’s brain starts firing up the remaining systems which have been shut down for two years. His brain had focused on getting his main bodily functions back first, and now he’s starting to access his memories and form thoughts.

He makes rough, aborted sounds in his throat from time to time, trying to speak.

He keeps looking at Steve for longer, and eventually he starts to frown. His lips move, like he’s forming words.

Steve smiles and squeezes his hand. “It’s Steve, Buck. Your Stevie. You’re okay. You’re doing so good. Take your time. You’ve been in cryo for a while, buddy. That’s why it’s gonna take you a while to get back to feeling normal.”

Bucky’s still frowning, staring at Steve…and then he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

*             *             *

That pattern repeats the next day. Bucky stays awake for longer spans of time, but all he does is frown and look around and make noises in his throat.

Steve’s starting to really fear that something had effected Bucky’s brain during the trigger removal procedure, but the doctors reassure him that Bucky’s acting normally, given the situation.

On the third day, Bucky finally starts being more animated. He squeezes Steve’s hand and eventually pulls his hand loose and curls his fingers.

Steve is watching Bucky’s fingers so he doesn’t notice that Bucky’s frown gets more annoyed, until Bucky makes a noise in his throat and jiggles his fingers harder.

He wants Steve to come closer.

Maybe.

Steve leans over him and Bucky slides his hand along the bed—still too weak to lift it—and his fingers curl weakly around Steve’s shirt. His fingers tug insistently until Steve leans down even more.

Bucky is staring at him, frowning, and it’s not until Bucky manages to lift his hand long enough to touch Steve’s beard, that Steve realizes he’s an idiot.

Of course Bucky’s been frowning at him for days—he must look like a complete stranger!

Everyone else around him has seen his gradual transformation over the past two years, but Bucky hasn’t.

Steve smiles and gently takes Bucky’s hand and kisses it. “It’s me, Buck. I promise. I know, I know. The beard and the hair are weird, and I’m a lot more tanned. But it’s me. I swear. It’s your Stevie. I should have shaved and cut my hair—sorry, I’m a nitwit.”

Bucky opens his mouth and moves his lips, asking something.

“I’m living in a little village, Buck. Not in the city. I’m a country boy now. ‘sides, I ain’t in the military no more. I don’t gotta cut my hair regulation short if I don’t wanna.” He deliberately puts a thick layer of Brooklyn over the words, hoping the familiar accent will help Bucky accept it’s really him under the scraggly hair and tanned skin.

He’s rewarded by Bucky’s lips slightly curling up, a faint echo of his usual smile.

*             *             *

It seems Bucky’s brain is completely up and running, but his muscles take much longer to catch up. It takes him another day until he starts being able to form words which Steve can understand, and he needs to stay in the medical wing, hooked up to all sorts of machines because he can barely move his arms and legs.

Steve sits with him all day, telling him what he’s been doing in the last two years. Sometimes Bucky falls asleep in the middle of a story, sometimes Bucky’s stare turns vacant and Steve knows he’s not listening, but Steve still keeps talking.

Then there’s the morning where Bucky’s awake when Steve comes into the wing, and Bucky asks him—in a rough, faint voice—when he can get out of the hospital.

Steve grins. “You keep talking that well and it might be soon. They gotta see that you’re strong enough to be off all the machines, Buck.” He’s been deliberately using the thick Brooklyn accent from his youth when he speaks to Bucky, hoping the familiarity will be comforting.

*             *             *

Once Bucky is released, Steve lifts him into a wheelchair and brings him to his old apartment. He tends to Bucky day and night, carrying him to the bathroom when he needs it, helping him get dressed and helping him eat the food which the doctors deliver each day.

Bucky’s very weak and he’s missing an arm, so he doesn’t put up a fuss about Steve helping him. He spends a lot of time sleeping, and Steve is careful not to disturb him. When he isn’t napping, they watch nature shows or other easy-to-follow TV shows on the enormous display, or Steve reads out-loud from books he remembers them reading when they were younger.

Steve wants to wrap himself around Bucky and never let go, but Bucky has random muscle spasms and sometimes his skin is overly sensitive for no reason, so touching him too much makes him uncomfortable.

Letting Bucky take his time and giving him space has the desired effect. Bucky focuses all his attention on getting stronger, and his fast progress even surprises the doctors. He easily moves through the different stages of eating, going from drinking nutritional smoothies to eating solid food within a week.

Steve helps him do various exercises to help him regain his strength, and by the time Bucky’s eating solid food, he’s slowly shuffling around on his own two feet.

*             *             *

While Bucky is having a nap one afternoon, Steve takes a little holographic phone-like gadget outside on the balcony with him. He carefully shuts the door behind him and calls Sam and Nat.

He’d contacted them both the day before to set up the phone call so they could catch up. He’s been so busy taking care of Bucky over the last two weeks that he’d only called them long enough to tell them they’re both fine.

He calls Nat first. She picks up after the first ring, her face appearing in the air in front of Steve. “Rogers! Right on time.” Her eyes roam around, probably looking at the area behind the video of Steve that she’s seeing. “Where’s Bucky?”

“Napping. If I asked him to chat with you both, he’d do it, but he’s still real weak.”

“We’ll have lots of time to catch up later. Have you dialed in Sam yet?”

“Not yet. Give me a second.”

He adds Sam to the call and waits until he picks up and his holographic face appears next to Natasha. “Hey, Sam!”

“Steve! Hey, buddy.”

“Nat is here too.”

“Hi, Sam!”

“Oh, hi, Nat! So, how’s Bucky?”

Steve smiles softly. It feels so great to finally have something new to report about Bucky other than ‘he’s frozen and fine’. “He’s doing real well. He ate some vegetables and fish today.”

“That’s great!” Sam says.

Natasha is frowning. “How did he do with it?”

“Really well. It went down and stayed down, and now he’s napping, so it’s looking good.”

Sam grins. “Man, what a relief, huh? I know T’Challa and his doctors know what they’re doing, but there was always that niggling worry in the back of your head, you know?”

Steve blows out a breath. “No kidding. But he really seems fine.”

“How’s his memory?” Natasha asks.

“We haven’t had real big conversations yet cause he’s still tired all the time, but he seems to remember everything that I’m bringing up.”

They ask more questions about Bucky’s progress, what T’Challa has told him about Bucky’s recovery, and how Steve’s doing.

“So have you planned out the Big Discussion yet?”

Steve shoots Natasha a glare. “Don’t say it like that.”

Sam laughs. “Why? It’s true. This is gonna one of the biggest conversations the two of you have ever had.”

“Jesus, quit making me nervous, both of you. I have it kinda planned out in my head, but mostly I’m just gonna go with the flow of things. This ain’t top priority. Bucky’s well-being is more important.”

Sam smiles kindly. “Sure, Bucky’s well-being is important, but so is yours. You aren’t gonna be happy with the way things are until you tell him how you feel and finally get that off your chest.”

“And you aren’t getting any younger, grandpa. Your clock is ticking.”

“I love you too, Romanov.”

*             *             *

When Bucky’s strong enough, the doctors do a final round of testing to check if the trigger removal process has really been a success.

Steve wants to watch, but Bucky refuses to let him be there.

Steve feels more comfortable being outside these days so he waits out in the garden, feeling anxious and asking his ma to please help Bucky.

_He’s been through so much, ma. He deserves to finally have peace and freedom. Please pull whatever strings you have to up there to make that happen. He deserves it, you know he does._

“Stevie! Hey!”

He spins around and sees Bucky slowly walking towards him, using the walking cane the medical staff have given him. He’s still a bit slow, but he’s getting faster each day.

Bucky’s grin tells him everything that Steve’s been waiting for. But he has to make sure. “It’s okay?”

Bucky smiles. “It went perfect. No reaction at all.”

_No reaction at all._

They did it.

They fucking did it.

It’s finally over.

He has Bucky back and he’s never losing him again.

…

He feels so overwhelmed with joy that he nearly falls over. He stumbles to a nearby bench and collapses on it.

Bucky hurries over to him and sits next to him. “Stevie? You okay? You’re shaking. Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

The tears have started and Steve can’t do anything about them. They run down his face into his beard and Steve raises a trembling hand to try to wipe them away. “I’m—I’m okay, Buck. I just—I’m real happy. I have you back.”

Bucky grins. He reaches out and pulls Steve close with his arm, holding him tight against his chest. “Yeah, you do. And I ain’t leaving until I’ve drawn my last breath. I promise.”

Steve clings to Bucky, burying his face in his shoulder and letting himself cry as Bucky rubs his back.

When Steve’s calmed down, he turns his head so he can breathe a bit better. Bucky looks down at him and smiles, brushing his tears away with his fingers. He kisses Steve’s forehead. “It’s okay, Stevie. I think we’re gonna be okay now. We’ve waited a long time and it’s been really hard, but I think we’re okay now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Time for the Big Discussion!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the Big Discussion!

Steve doesn’t want to overwhelm Bucky so he gives him lots of space. He doesn’t bring up anything that doesn’t relate to Bucky’s health or his recovery, but when Bucky’s strong enough to focus on things other than his own body, Bucky starts asking questions.

At breakfast one morning, he drops his spoon into his empty bowl and stares at Steve. “So, how long was I under for?”

Steve carves another slice off his Bombu fruit. “Two years.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. “Shit.”

Steve frowns. “I told you that before. You don’t remember?” He sticks the Bombu slice into his mouth and chews.

Bucky shakes his head. “Steve, I barely remember anything from before the final testing. I know you told me I woke up two weeks ago, but I don’t remember much of that. Shit. Two _years_?!” He stares at Steve.

Steve nods. “Yup. That’s how long it took until T’Challa and the doctors found a solution.”

Bucky’s staring at him, incredulous. “And you waited around for _two years_?”

Steve snorts. “What else did you expect me to do, jerk? Of course I waited. Not right here in the palace, cause that wasn’t good for me, but I went and found a nice place to wait. I ain’t leaving you. Ever. Til the end of the line, idiot.”

He doesn’t want to overwhelm Bucky by telling him he’s found them a home, a real home, so he keeps that to himself.

For now.

Bucky stares down at his bowl, apparently digesting the news that he’d missed out on two years of Steve’s life.

Steve watches him and sees a range of emotions flicker over Bucky’s face as he sorts through his reactions to the news. Eventually, his eyes widen and he looks concerned, then that fades into a casual blankness.

“So…so did you find someone special? I bet you did, huh? You better not tell me all that time I spent trying to teach you how to talk to girls and fellas was wasted.” Bucky’s tone is light, trying to go for casual, but Steve can see he’s tense.

Steve doesn’t know why Bucky’s tense. He’s probably just annoyed at having missed so much of Steve’s life.

But Steve is stuck on the question Bucky had asked.

He smiles.

This is his chance.

Finally, after a lifetime of being a coward, he can finally tell this amazing man how he feels about him.

“Yeah, Buck, there _is_ someone special in my life.”

Bucky’s face stays blank. He blinks a few times, but there’s nothing else. “Oh?”

Steve smiles softly. “Yeah. In fact, it’s been a long term thing.”

“Oh.”

Steve puts the Bombu and his knife down on his plate. “Buck, I wanna tell you something.”

“You—you _are_ telling me something.”

“Yeah, but this is real important. I need you to listen real close, okay?”

Bucky is still frozen on his chair, his face completely blank and his eyes stuck on his bowl, but he manages a little nod. Despite his attempts at keeping his face blank, Steve can tell he looks scared. Or concerned. Or…something.

He doesn’t know why Bucky’s in such a weird mood, but Steve will try to keep things cheerful. He chuckles. “Don’t worry, it’s not that bad. You don’t gotta look so worried.”

Bucky’s posture doesn’t change. He’s still sitting there, looking worried or scared or something else. It’s throwing Steve off, not knowing exactly what’s bothering Bucky. He’s not used to not being able to read the jerk.

“Buck, it’s you. The special person in my life is you.”

It seems to take a second for the words to register. Bucky is still staring at his bowl, then he’s slowly frowning and turning his head to stare at Steve. “W-what?”

Steve smiles. He’s so excited and so happy to finally be sharing this news with the one person he’s always wanted to share it with. His heart is practically singing. “Buck, I love you. Not just as a friend, but I’m _in_ love with you. I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old. Maybe even earlier, I don’t remember. Now—” Steve holds up a hand. “Don’t go getting into a tizzy, alright? I don’t expect you to feel the same way, I don’t expect anything to change between us. You’re my best friend, my family, my everything and none of that’s gotta change. I just wanna tell you cause you deserve to know how much you mean to me.”

And after two years of practicing every night, Steve can’t help but say it again. It slides off his tongue so easily now. “I love you, Buck. I love you so much. And I’m so happy that I finally get to tell you.”

Saying it is so damn satisfying. Like he’s throwing a huge weight off his shoulders.

He’s so focused on how relieved and happy he feels that he’s not noticing Bucky’s face. When he finally does focus on it…he doesn’t like what he sees.

Bucky’s gone pale and his eyes are wide. He’s clenching his jaw and breathing too fast, like he’s about to have a panic attack. He jerks his eyes off Steve and stares at his empty bowl again.

 _Shit_. This isn’t what Steve wanted. This isn’t what Steve wanted at all! He was so sure that Bucky would be okay with it! So sure!

“Buck, come on, calm down. I know you don’t feel the same way and that’s okay. I’ve made peace with that. I ain’t ever gonna pressure you or get weird or nothing. I just wanna be with you in whatever way you want. I’m really good at loving you without having you love me the same way. I’ve been doing it for a long time. Please, Buck, please don’t get weird. I—I don’t—”

“February 7th, 1938,” Bucky says, his voice shaky and faint.

That completely throws Steve out of his carefully prepared speech. “What?”

“February 7th, 1938.”

“I heard you, Buck. But what the hell does a random February date have to do—”

“It was snowing real bad. I spent the whole day outside, walking around, looking for work. I couldn’t find nothing. I hadn’t eaten all day, I was soaked, my feet were frozen, I couldn’t feel my hands, and my legs kept walking because they knew if I stopped walking, I’d probably freeze to death right then and there.”

Bucky’s voice is still quiet and so fragile. He’s clutching the table so hard his knuckles are white and he seems a second away from flying to pieces.

Steve is frozen in place, not knowing what to do. He wants to offer comfort, but he has no idea if Bucky would welcome physical comfort right now.

He decides to let Bucky keep saying whatever it is he’s getting at. Clearly Bucky feels the need to get these words out.

“I gave up when it started getting dark. I barely managed to get up the stairs and when I got into the apartment, I remember being so happy to be home that I wanted to cry, but I was too frozen to cry. You were there. You were standing by the stove and you had the fire going, and a bucket of steaming water, and a pot of soup on the stove. The warmth was like a fucking jacket, it just wrapped around me. I could’ve just stood there the rest of the night and been happy. You pulled me inside and peeled me out of my frozen clothes, wrapped me in a warm blanket and sat me on the chair.”

None of what Bucky’s describing is unusual. Steve always took care of Bucky when he came home after work—or a day of looking for work—rain or shine, winter or summer.

“You washed the filth off my arms and face. You were so gentle and the water was so warm. Then you helped me get up and shuffle to the bed. I thought I’d crush you before we got there. I don’t know how you managed to drag me along until I landed on the bed.” He lets out a chuckle.

“Then you started rubbing my hands and my feet. I started gettin’ feeling back and I was crying cause they hurt so bad. You’d stop rubbing and kiss my cheek and tell me it was gonna be okay. Then you put the bricks between my feet and my hands and wiped the tears off my cheeks when I kept crying—like I was eight years old instead of twenty-one. You kept saying I was being so brave and everything was gonna be okay.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “When I could sit up on my own, you fed me soup, one spoonful at a time. That’s when my voice started working again and I told you I’d come home with nothing. You hushed me and told me it was okay, that we’d try again tomorrow and we’d figure it out cause we always did. I couldn’t stop crying cause of the pain and cause I was mad at myself, and I thought you should be mad at me too, but you weren’t. You just kept hushing me and being so gentle.”

Steve still doesn’t understand what the hell this has to do with Steve’s confession. Nothing that Bucky is describing is out of the ordinary. They’ve taken care of each other since the day they’d met and gotten beat up by those bullies at school.

“I remember watching you sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully dunking the spoon back into the soup, telling me how amazing I was cause of how hard I’d tried and that everything was gonna be okay—and I remember thinking; ‘Lord, I love this man’. It wasn’t a big, scary thought. It was comfortable and warm and I remember thinking these ain’t new feelings. They can’t be. They feel like I’ve had them for years. I knew that I loved you and I would never love anyone as much as I loved you.”

That’s—that’s very nice, but confused emotions generated by a hypothermic mind can’t be taken as reality.

“Buck, look. I know those days were real hard. I remember. You almost died and your body was going through a lot. It wouldn’t have mattered who was sitting next to you. It could have been old Mrs. Grady from down the hall and you would have thought you were in love with her too.”

Bucky is still staring into his bowl. “That’s what I thought. The next morning when I woke up and I was feeling okay again, I remember what I’d thought about the night before and I thought it was silly. Then I rolled over and looked at you sleeping next to me—and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It felt like my heart had turned into a lightbulb and somebody had flicked the switch on. I knew what I’d felt the night before was real. I loved you. I loved you the way I wasn’t supposed to. And things were tough enough and I didn’t wanna complicate things, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Bucky takes a shaky breath. “I was always so mad at myself. All those nights we spent together in our apartment. All those nights we spent sharing a tent during the war. And I never had the fucking courage to say something. I—I won’t tell you the details cause those are sad details that don’t need to be talked about right now, but I spent a lot of time in different prison cells, and in each one the biggest regret I had was not telling you how I felt.”

Steve stares at him. A tiny, tiny glimmer of hope blooms in his chest, but Steve ruthlessly squashes it. Bucky had used ‘loved’.

As in past tense. Everything he’d said was based on the past. That doesn’t mean—

Bucky’s still talking. “And you know when I last had that pinch of regret in my gut?”

Steve’s thoughts are busy preparing himself for the let-down he knows is coming, so he’s not fully prepared to answer questions. “Uh, no?”

Bucky finally tears his gaze off his bowl and stares at Steve. His expression is unreadable. “When I stepped into the cryo unit. You were standing right in front of me and I actually opened my mouth to tell you, and then I closed it again, because I didn’t wanna be a selfish jerk. I wasn’t gonna drop something like that on you and then leave you to deal with it. So I kept my mouth shut.”

Steve blinks at him.

He opens his mouth.

Then he closes it again.

Then he blinks at Bucky some more.

“Are—are you telling me that the day you went into cryo, we were both thinking the same thing…and we just didn’t…?”

A small, sorrowful smile flickers over Bucky’s face. “I guess so. I guess we’re both idiots.”

That flicker of hope suddenly bursts into a raging inferno. “I—Buck, what are you saying? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that I love you, Steve. I’ve been in love with you for most of my life. And it turns out that you feel the same way.”

Steve feels like he can’t breathe. “What—what—”

Bucky’s staring at him. “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I wanna go over there and kiss you.”

Steve’s so full of emotions that he feels like he’s going to burst into tears. He stares at Bucky. “I—Buck—I—yes. Yes, please.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, but his brain isn’t working properly anymore.

Bucky pushes himself away from the table, takes two strides until he’s next to Steve, spins Steve’s stool around and grabs the back of Steve’s neck with his hand. Steve can feel his hand shaking.

Bucky freezes, his face an inch from Steve’s. His eyes are wide and filled with uncertainty and wild hope. “Is this what you want, Stevie?”

Steve reaches out shaking hands and grabs Bucky’s shirt to pull him between his legs. “This is what I’ve wanted for twenty years, Buck. Twenty _fucking_ years.”

He can’t believe this is happening.

Bucky presses his forehead against Steve’s and squeezes his neck. “Then we got a lot of time to make up for, don’t we?” His voice is fragile and rough again.

Then Bucky tilts his head, brushes his lips over Steve’s and Steve’s heart nearly flies out of his chest.

*             *             *

It feels weird kissing somebody with a beard and both of them keep forgetting that Bucky’s missing his left arm, but Steve knows Bucky isn’t up for anything too athletic anyway.

Steve wraps his legs around Bucky’s waist and deepens the kiss, pouring twenty years of love and affection into it. Bucky moans, tightens his grip on Steve’s neck and slides his tongue into Steve’s mouth.

Steve’s getting hard and he swivels his hips, pressing himself against Bucky, gasping when sparks race up his spine. He gasps into Bucky’s mouth. “Jesus.”

“My name’s Bucky,” Bucky mumbles against Steve’s lips.

Steve’s lips curl into a smile and he snorts an unattractive laugh. Bucky pulls back, but keeps himself pressed against Steve, his hips thrusting gently.

Bucky’s smiling at him. “I’ve loved you my whole damn life, punk.”

Steve smiles and pulls Bucky’s chin back so they can keep kissing. “I love you too, Buck. Never been anybody else. You moved into my heart and you didn’t leave room for anybody else.”

Bucky smiles and gently nips Steve’s lips. “I’m a selfish bastard, ain’t I?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“You gonna help the one armed man get his pants off or what?”

Steve shifts himself off the stool and pulls down his pants and undoes Bucky’s pants. He grabs Bucky’s ass and pulls them close, their cocks leaving streaks on their shirts.

Steve moans. “Damn, that feels good.”

“Gonna feel even better when I make you come.”

“Promises, promises, Barnes.”

Bucky releases Steve’s neck, licks his hand and reaches down to grab both of them, jerking them in time with his tongue thrusting into Steve’s mouth.

Steve’s breath catches and he feels a tingling, sparking sensation racing up his spine and down into his fingertips. He needs to pull away from Bucky’s lips so he can breathe. “Oh. Oh, Jesus.” He presses his face against Bucky’s and closes his eyes, feeling overwhelmed.

Bucky gives him a peck on the lips, twists his hand and rubs his thumb over their slits, and that’s when Steve comes, shooting all over his shirt and Bucky’s.

Bucky follows him a minute later.

When Steve’s done, his legs are trembling badly and he feels so lightheaded that he thinks he’s going to pass out. Bucky grabs Steve around the waist and helps him stumble over to the bed and face plant on it.

Steve hates being on the bed—he’s been sleeping on the couch with the cushions tossed off it—but right now, he can handle the squishiness.

He gasps into the blanket, feeling his trembling limbs gradually calm.

He feels Bucky rubbing his hand up Steve’s back, slipping under his shirt and running down over his ass. He’s lying beside Steve and he shuffles closer until he can nudge Steve’s nose with his own. He takes his hand off Steve’s back so he can smooth strands of Steve’s hair behind his ears.

“You okay, Stevie?”

Steve smiles. “Yeah. Just—never done that with another person before.”

Bucky gets that sad frown on his face, so Steve crawls over him to kiss it away. That distracts Bucky and they’re back to kissing, Bucky reaching down to grab Steve’s ass while they explore each other’s mouths.

“By—by the way—” Bucky mumbles against Steve’s lips. “I like this new ‘no underwear’ thing you’ve got going on. Makes things much easier.”

Steve smiles. “You should try it.”

“Hmm, I should. I’ve already got the scruffy cave man look going. I might as well go the whole way.”

Steve laughs and nips Bucky’s lip. He pulls back and stares down at him. “I love you, Buck.” It still feels so satisfying to finally say it to the man himself and not just his picture. Steve knows he’s never gonna get tired of saying it.

Bucky smiles, his eyes sparkling. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

Steve brushes his nose against Bucky’s. “Always.”

*             *             *

A few days later, Bucky gets fit with his new arm. It’s strong and durable, but most importantly, it looks like a normal arm. Bucky hadn’t wanted another weapon or something that stands out.

“I’m gonna live a normal life from now on, and I can’t do that when everybody’s staring at my crazy arm.”

Once Bucky is happy with his arm, Steve thinks it’s time to talk about their long term plans.

He’s been gone from the village for three weeks and he’s missing it badly. But first, he has to talk to Bucky about the situation.

Steve’s avoided talking to Bucky about what exactly he’s been doing for the past two years, not wanting to interfere with Bucky’s recovery.

But now it’s time.

They’re lying out on the balcony on the patch of decorative grass that’s one of the only places where Steve feels comfortable lying down for long periods.

Steve’s wrapped around Bucky, his head resting on Bucky’s chest, listening to his heart beating and feeling his arms—both the original and the prosthetic one—rubbing his back.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I tell you what I’ve been doing for the last two years?”

“You said you weren’t in the palace, right? Where did you go? Does T’Challa have another place somewhere?”

Steve smiles. Not even close. “I—I wasn’t doing too well when you went under, Buck. I was—I was in a really dark place and I was unhappy and really lonely.”

He can feel that Bucky’s trying to get up, getting anxious and upset over that news. Steve rubs his belly. “Hush, calm down. I’m fine now. I’m just tryin’ to explain why I left and where I went. Please, just listen, okay?”

So they lie there for an hour while Steve tells him the whole story. He skips over a lot of details but he tells him the important parts.

He tells Bucky that being in the village had helped heal his deeply damaged soul and mind. Not having to deal with the modern world’s confusing technology and not having to remember which customs are outdated made his life easier and less stressful. The simple, uncomplicated lifestyle reminds him of growing up in Brooklyn, and he loves it. Living in the village has made him strong and happy.

And he thinks it could do the same for Bucky.

But he doesn’t want to force Bucky to come with him if he doesn’t want to.

“It’s up to you, Buck. I ain’t gonna force you to live out in the middle of nowhere if you don’t wanna. But we do gotta go back at least to—”

Bucky gently dumps Steve off his chest and rolls them so he’s propped himself over Steve. He stares down at Steve. “Those people are good to you, right?”

Steve nods.

“And you feel good being there?”

Steve nods again.

Bucky smiles and kisses him softly. “Then that’s where I wanna be too.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to head back to the village!

They’re ready to go back to the village a few days later. T’Challa comes to see them while Steve is stuffing some extra clothes for Bucky into a pack.

“Hi! I thought you were busy today,” Steve says.

T’Challa smiles. “I’m never too busy to say good bye to good friends.”

Throwing an extra shirt at Steve, Bucky snorts. “We’re just going to the other side of the rock. You don’t gotta make it sound like we’re heading to the other side of the world.”

The King chuckles. “How is your new arm, Bucky?”

“Great! No problems so far.”

“I’m happy to hear that. Here,” he holds out a small leather kit. “These are some tools for maintaining the arm. If you have any big issues with it, my engineers will assist you, but you should be able to tighten loose screws and keep the mechanisms clean with these tools.”

Bucky takes the kit with a soft smile. “Thank you, T’Challa.”

“Of course.” He glances at the pack Steve is filling. “Are those clothes going to be enough?” He asks Steve, switching to Wakandan.

Steve snorts. “Oh, yes. I’ll help him make his own anyway, but we’re used to making do with only a few things,” he replies in Wakandan.

Shaking his head, T’Challa has a smile on his face. “Better you than me. I like having some options for my clothes. Not too many options, but some. Do you need any medication? Or water filters?”

He’s still speaking Wakandan, and Steve replies in the same.

“I’ve got some filters with me, and we’re fine for medication. If Buck has any issues, the villagers can help him.”

Once the clothes are stuffed into the pack, Steve closes it and gives it a pat. “Alright, that’s ready.” He glances up and sees Bucky staring at him, an amused smile on his face.

He does the mental switch back to English. “What?”

“No, nothing. It’s just—it’s real neat to hear you speaking Wakandan. I know you’ve been teaching me those phrases, but hearing you talk real quick and fluent like that is neat. I still ain’t used to hearing something other than English come out of your mouth. Well, except for random German or French phrases during the war.”

Steve smiles. “You’ll be fluent in no time, Buck. And you’ve done real well with the basic things I’ve taught you so far.” They’ve covered some basic phrases, numbers and simple sentence structures. Steve isn’t a great language teacher, but he know what kind of things Bucky will have to say most often.

Bucky grins. “Thank you,” he says in Wakandan.

T’Challa laughs. “Very good, Bucky! What’s your name?”

“My name is Bucky.”

Steve can hear that the Wakandan words of familiar phrases are starting to roll off Bucky’s tongue a little easier after days of practice.

“Wonderful! And what’s the other very important phrase?”

Bucky clears his throat. “I am a friend of King T’Challa.”

T’Challa beams at him. “You’ll do fine, don’t worry. And you have the necklace, yes?”

Tugging the white stone necklace out from under his shirt, he holds it up. It’s a replica of the one Steve’s worn for two years.

“Good. You’ll be fine, don’t worry. And I expect at least weekly updates and monthly visits.”

“Yes, yes,” Bucky says in Wakandan.

Steve grins. “Alright, you two. Bucky and I have a bus to catch.”

“I’ll walk you to the gates. And you’ll call me tonight to tell me how things went, yes?”

“Of course.”

As they get on the bus and head out of the city, Steve feels that little discomfort and anxiety leaving him.

He knows he’s going home.

Bucky can’t stop staring at the beautiful scenery around them as they leave the city and enter the countryside, pointing out neat looking trees and plants. But every few minutes, he’ll turn and give Steve a soft smile.

Finally Steve smiles back and asks him what the hell he’s smiling at.

“You, punk. You’re glowing, you look so happy.”

Steve smiles. “I’m going home with my best fella. I’ve waited a long time, so I think I deserve to be a little giddy.”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, you do.”

The scenery keep Bucky’s happy and occupied, until they get off the bus at the village and Steve starts walking towards Obasi’s home.

It’s easy to tell that Bucky’s nervous. He’s gone quiet and looks a bit anxious. Steve reaches over and takes his hand. “It’ll be fine, Buck. Just be yourself and they’ll love you within two minutes.”

Bucky tightens his grip on Steve’s hand and follows him through the village.

Everybody they pass shouts a greeting to Steve, which Steve returns, but when they notice Steve has a stranger with him, they all stop what they’re doing to stare and follow them.

A lot of people are whispering Bucky’s name, probably recognizing him from the many sketches they’ve seen of him. He sees a few children making an attempt to run to Bucky—probably wanting to ask him questions—but their parents hold them back and hush their excited whispers.

Up to now, Bucky has been a character in Steve’s stories and a part of Steve’s past. Now he’s another foreigner walking through their village who will have to prove himself the same way Steve did. The fact that Bucky is very important to Steve will be of some importance, but Steve had warned Bucky that it won’t count for a lot.

Steve is respected in the village, but he isn’t anybody important. He’s just another average villager who doesn’t get any special treatment, which is exactly how Steve likes it. But that means Bucky isn’t entitled to any special treatment either.

By the time they get to Obasi’s home, half the village is following them. Steve can see that the boats are already tied up on shore, so the men have returned from fishing already. Which means pretty soon they’ll have everybody gathered around them.

He sees Urbi and Akanni in the crowd and shouts a greeting over the swell of excited chatter.

Urbi jerks her chin at Bucky. “Is that him?” She shouts.

Bucky grins. He’s wearing one of the translation devices in his ear.

Feeling a bit shy all of a sudden, Steve smiles and nods.

Urbi narrows her eyes at Steve. “Did you confess?”

He knows exactly what she’s talking about. And by the snort of laughter from Bucky, he knows too. Steve’s spent the last few days telling him about Urbi and Akanni. He’d told Bucky about some of the more embarrassing stories which he knows Urbi will bring up as soon as possible, and he’d also told him that she and Akanni had figured out how Steve feels about Bucky. Steve hadn’t wanted Bucky to feel blindsided or caught off-guard by two people who know so much about him before having met him face to face.

Bucky’s grinning at Urbi. “Yes!” He shouts to her in Wakandan. “Steve, how do I say ‘I confessed too’?”

Steve translates and Bucky shouts that to Urbi as well.

She erupts into delighted laughter at that news and shouts back: “I knew it! Excellent! Excellent!”

Steve’s smile grows into a grin at seeing her excitement. Then he remembers that Bucky’s about to meet village council, and that wipes the smile off his face.

They need to focus. He gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze to get him back on track.

Obasi is sitting in his doorway and when Steve and Bucky have stopped in front of him, he holds up a hand to quell the noise around them.

Stepping forward, Bucky politely inclines his head in greeting. Like Steve had told him to, Bucky waits for Obasi to speak first.

The old man stares at him for a while, then he says: “We don’t allow strangers in this village. Tell me who you are.”

Steve knows it’s a test. He also knows that Bucky will nail it.

Bucky launches into the first part of his speech which he and Steve had practiced a dozen times, mixing a few newer phrases in amongst the ones Bucky’s already familiar with. “Hello, Obasi. My name is Bucky. I am a stranger to you. I am Steve’s love. I am a friend of King T’Challa.”

Once that part of the speech is done, Steve lets out the breath he’d been holding. Bucky’s pronunciation wasn’t great, but it was understandable. So far, so good.

Reaching under the neck of his shirt, Bucky pulls out the white stone necklace. He hands it to Obasi, who takes it and carefully studies it the same way he had studied Steve’s two years before.

Nobody moves while Obasi inspects the stones one by one. He hands it back to Bucky. “What do you want from us?”

Here comes the other part of Bucky’s speech. You can do it, Buck!

“I want to stay in your village. I will work hard and earn the right to stay. Will you give me the chance to prove myself?”

Obasi looks Bucky up and down. He nods in Steve’s direction. “Will you take care of Steve?”

Immediately, Bucky nods. “Yes,” he says in Wakandan. “Yes, yes, yes.” He doesn’t know any other vocabulary words which would apply to the situation, but his tone brought across his message.

The old man looks back and forth between them, then he tells them he needs to discuss the matter with village council.

He gestures for the other council members to step into his house, they shut the door and have a few minutes of quiet discussion.

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand and gives him a smile. “It’s okay, Buck. I know it’ll be okay.”

Sure enough, the council steps back out and Obasi goes right to Bucky. “You’re a strong man, like Steve, so we’ll let you stay as long as you help the village and stay true to your promises and agreements.”

Bowing, Bucky smiles. “Thank you. I—” He turns to Steve and switches to English. “How do I say ‘I won’t disappoint you’?”

Steve mutters the translation, and Bucky stumbles through it. What he lacks in pronunciation, he makes up for with sincerity.

Obasi gives Bucky a long look, then he looks at Steve. “You will teach him our ways and how to live respectfully amongst us.”

Steve nods. “I will.”

“Alright. Now leave me.” He waves a hand to encompass the entire crowd around him. “I want to finish my dinner in peace.”

While the crowd starts to disperse, Obasi retrieves firewood from his home and starts building a fire in his outdoor pit.

But Bucky’s not done. He steps up to the old man and asks: “I help you please?”

Steve struggles to hide a smile. Bucky hadn’t remembered the phrase correctly, but his meaning should be clear enough.

Obasi pauses, gives Bucky another long look, then hands over the handful of firewood and sits down on his bench.

This is something that’s old hat for Bucky, so Steve makes no move to help him.

Bucky builds up a fire—the same way he’d building hundreds of fires in their apartment’s stove and in fire pits across Europe—and looks around for the flint and striker, which Obasi hands him.

He struggles to strike the flint with his prosthetic, but when he switches hands, he gets a spark and manages to get the fire going.

It’s the first time he’s done it in years, but if he’s nervous, Steve can’t see any sign of it.

Once Buck’s got a crackling fire going in the pit, he hands back the flint and metal striker, says “Thank you” and goes back to Steve.

Obasi is focused on his fish and he doesn’t respond to Bucky, but there’s a hint of a smile on his face. That’s a good sign.

There was never any doubt in Steve’s mind that Bucky will quickly charm his way into the villagers’ hearts. It’s a struggle to keep the proud smile off his face. “Come on, Buck. I’ll show you home.”

He leads the way to his little house and opens the door, taking a peek inside before he lets Bucky see. Everything is exactly the way he’d left it.

He opens the door wider and gestures for Bucky go in. “Home sweet home.”

Stepping inside, he turns in a circle, taking everything in. His eyes catch on the many pictures stuck to the walls, focusing on the picture in the very center.

Bucky’s always been the center of Steve’s world, so it made sense to put his picture in a position of honor in his home. His ma’s picture is right next to him.

Bucky stares at his own face, then he stares at Steve. “You put me on your wall?”

“Yup. Seems I can’t go too long without looking at that mug of yours.”

Bucky stares at the picture for a long time, then looks at all the other pictures one by one and the things Steve has on his shelves. He picks up the pocket watch and snaps it open and closed a few times. It’s empty now but Steve couldn’t bear to part with it. Then Bucky looks at Steve’s other furniture.

He frowns when he sees a log bench and two stump stools close to the fire pit. “You get lots of company, huh?”

Steve snorts. “Not really. The bench is for visitors. The stump stools are for you and me.”

Bucky stares at it. “You made me a stump stool?”

“Of course. I told you: I’ve been waiting and getting things ready. Oh, that reminds me.”

Stepping around Bucky, he takes the lid off one of the baskets. He reaches inside and takes out one of the plastic bags, stuffed full of letters.

“I’ve been writing you letters. Well, it’s more like keeping a diary, I guess. But I addressed them all to you. I didn’t want you to miss anything, so I wrote it all down.”

He takes out the thick bundle and hands it to Bucky. He’s gone through them so many times, adding more details, correcting mistakes and putting them in chronological order.

“Oh, and I have more pictures. I added some pictures right in the letters—diagrams and things—but most of the pictures are separate.” He indicates the other plastic bags in the basket. “They’re all in there. I labelled them so you can figure out which one corresponds with which letter.”

Bucky takes the letter bundle and leafs through them, flipping through almost two years of letters.

“You—you wrote these for me?”

Steve nods. “Yup. I told you, I didn’t want you to miss anything. You couldn’t be here so I wrote it down so you could read about it later. You don’t gotta read them all now—or you don’t gotta read them at all if you don’t—”

Bucky covers Steve’s mouth his with one hand, gently holding the letters in his other. His eyes are shimmering and he’s biting his lip. He shuts the door behind him and tugs on Steve’s shirt to pull him closer.

When he’s close, Bucky wraps his arms around him, the letters pressed against Steve’s back. “Thank you for making me such a beautiful home, Stevie.” His voice is a rough whisper.

“You like it?”

A hand smacks him on the ass. “Like it? I love it. It’s got everything we need. And I can’t wait to read those letters and look at your other beautiful pictures. It’s been so long since I’ve looked at your sketches, punk.”

Steve smiles. “Wanna see if the bed passes your standards too?”

Bucky grins back and kisses him. “Any bed that’s got you in it passes my standards.”

Chuckling, Steve kisses him back. “Goof,” he mumbles against Bucky’s lips.

*             *             *

A while later, Steve hears a familiar voice yelling “Foreigner!”

Letting out a groan, he thumps his head against his grass pillow. “That’s Urbi. Let me go see what she wants.”

He untangles his limbs from Bucky and snatches his pants and Bucky’s shirt off the log bench. Once he’s dressed, he sticks his head out the door, looking towards Urbis’s house.

“There are two foreigners now! You need to be more specific!” he calls over.

She’s sitting by her outdoor fire pit, turning skewers of fish over the flames. Akanni is sitting in their doorway, fixing his fishing net. “Are you two going to continue doing things that need a closed door or do you want to come cook dinner here?”

Her smirk is so big it’s probably visible to people in the next village.

Steve ducks back inside. Bucky’s already getting dressed. “We don’t have to, Buck. I know it’s been a long day.”

Bucky smiles. “I’ve heard so much about Urbi and Akanni—I wanna spend more time with them. Besides, we gotta eat, don’t we?”

They grab food, dishes and Steve stops to fill up one of the water bottles he’d packed from the palace. It has a built-in filter and he’d taken it specifically for Bucky to use until he gets used to the water. While they walk, Steve hands Bucky the water bottle.

“Use that for drinking the water, Buck. There’s a filter in the bottle. I’ve got spare filters when that one gets clogged up.”

Bucky frowns. “The water ain’t clean?”

“The water’s clean enough for people who are used to it, but you ain’t used to it.”

“Well I gotta get used to it, don’t I? Why not start right now? I don’t need the filter.”

Steve stops and gives Bucky a look. “Buck, please. You ain’t in top shape right now and you don’t need to be putting your body through a big fight right now. Just wait a few weeks until you’re sure you’re doing okay and then you can start getting used to the water.”

Making a face, Bucky lets out an annoyed grumble. “Fine. Any other drinking and eating rules?”

“Don’t touch any Osi nuts. They look like walnuts but they smell like coconuts. I don’t got any in the house right now and I won’t bring any home for a while, but if anyone offers you any, give them to me and I’ll eat them.”

“Why? They taste nasty? I can handle it.”

“No, they taste really good actually, but your stomach ain’t gonna like them at first. Just trust me, okay? I’ll grind some up and start adding it to our bread a little at a time and that’ll let you get used to it. I’m trying to do you a favor, jerk. I had to learn the hard way.”

Bucky smiles, losing that stubborn glint in his eye. “Thanks, Stevie. Okay, I promise, no unfiltered water and no nuts until you say.”

“You can eat all the other nuts, just not Osi nuts. They look like—”

“Walnuts. Smell like coconuts. Yeah, I got it. Come on, let’s hurry up. Urbi is giving us an unimpressed look.”

While Steves make flatbread and maneuvers Urbi’s skewers so he can put his own pan on the fire, Bucky hangs back a bit, watching them. Urbi stands over Steve, fussing over what he’s doing and providing commentary on how to do it better.

When she’s satisfied with Steve’s cooking progress, she comes over to Bucky and smacks his arm. “Foreigner!”

Bucky smiles politely. “Yes?”

“You have to learn how to speak Wakandan quickly! Very quickly.”

Steve laughs. “He’ll learn as quickly as he needs to, Urbi. Pressuring him won’t help.”

Waving a dismissive hand at Steve, she focuses back on Bucky. “You need to learn quickly because I’ve been hearing a lot of stories from this one here—” she flaps a hand in Steve’s direction, “—and they’re always full of ‘Bucky did this’ and ‘Bucky did that’ and I want more stories with ‘Steve did this’ and ‘Steve did that’.”

Bucky grins. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

Urbi waggles a finger at him. “I don’t just want to hear more stories about Steve, but most of the stories I’ve already heard reflect very well on Steve. Also you, but I’m sure that was true. But Steve? That’s suspicious. I know this boy and he isn’t as calm headed as his stories make it seem. You will tell me the truth, but to do that, you need to learn how to speak Wakandan. Quickly.”

Bucky laughs. “Yes. Yes, yes. I learn. I you Steve. Yes.”

There’s another smirk and another arm smack. “Good.” She turns back to Steve. “I will find out how much you’ve been lying to me, foreigner.”

Steve smiles. “Suspicions won’t catch you any fish, Urbi.” He doesn’t often have the chance to use Wakandan idioms—especially on Urbi—and he loves it when the occasion arises. It always makes Akanni smile proudly.

Sure enough, Akanni is focused on his net, but he’s got a smile on his face.

She scoffs. “Oh, these ones will keep me fed, don’t worry! Now, turn those fish! They’re starting to burn.”

“They aren’t burning! They’re barely cooked.”

Akanni gestures at Bucky. He points at one of the stump stools. “Sit there, Bucky.”

Bucky has a seat and nods his head in thanks. “Thank you.”

The older man goes back to fixing his net while his gaze stays on Bucky, not having to look at what his hands are doing. “What are you sitting on?”

Bucky frowns. He looks down at his stump stool and then back at him. “I don’t understand.” That’s another phrase Steve has taught him.

Akanni gestures at the stump beneath Bucky with his fishing bone needle. “You are sitting on a stump. Repeat after me: I am sitting on a stump.”

“I am sit stump.”

“No. Take out the thing in your ear so you can hear me properly.”

Bucky reaches up and takes out the translation device. Akanni repeats the phrase and Bucky slowly repeats it, getting it right this time.

“Good,” Akanni says. He points at Urbi and Steve. “Urbi and Steve are cooking.”

Steve mutters the English translation without taking his eyes off the fish skewers.

Bucky gets it and slowly repeats the phrase. He frowns, then he carefully adds: “I am not cooking.”

There’s a pleased smile on Akanni’s face. “Good! Good, good, good!”

Steve ducks his head so nobody can see the huge, proud smile glowing on his face. That wasn’t a phrase he’d taught Bucky—that was just Bucky using his brain: taking the new words he’d learned and combining them with old words in the proper sentence structure.

He knows it’ll take Bucky much less time to become fluent than it had taken Steve.

While they’re eating their dinner, Akanni teaches Bucky more vocabulary words connected to the food they’re eating and the house they’re sitting in front of.

Steve is listening to Bucky and Akanni and interjects to translate for Bucky, but his attention is caught by groups of children peeking at them from the side of the house. They stay where they are, jostling for better peeking position and whispering to each other.

He knows what they want.

When Steve is finished eating, he pulls his stump stool farther away from the wall so he’s more accessible. “Buck? I’m gonna let the kids come and touch my hair. It’s a thing they like to do. Don’t worry, I’ll tell them your hair’s off-limits.”

Bucky wipes his hands on his pants. “I don’t mind.” He pulls his translator out of his pocket and jams it back into his ear.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. They don’t pull, do they?”

“Sometimes. Just say—” he says the word for ‘gentle’ in Wakandan, “—and they’ll calm down.”

Bucky pulls his stump stool away from the wall and puts some distance between himself and Steve. He makes eye contact with some of peekers and waves them over. “Come on. We’re ready.”

The kids understand the hand wave, but they’re slow to step out from their hiding places, not sure about trusting Bucky yet.

Urbi makes an annoyed sound. “Hurry up, you monkeys! They aren’t going to sit here all day for you!”

That gets the kids going and they run out from behind the house, having loud, excited discussions over whose hair to touch first (“I want the yellow one!” “I want the black one first!” “The black hair looks softer!”)

They split up and crowd around Bucky and Steve, hands reaching for their hair and beards.

“Just sit still, Buck. I’ve been gone for a few weeks so they haven’t had their fill for a while. If you get tired of it, tell me and I’ll call them off.”

The kids settle in, finding good positions and gently running fingers through their hair and their beards.

One of the little girls—Dayo—clambers up on Steve’s lap and kneels on his thighs so she can inspect his beard very closely while she touches it.

She’s frowning and looks displeased. “You cut it short! I don’t like it short!”

Steve smiles. “It’ll grow back soon, I promise. You can check it every day.”

She looks mollified, but she’s blocking Steve’s view of Bucky, so he gives her hip a light tap. “Dayo, sit down, please. I need to see Bucky.”

After grumbling unhappy, she plops herself down on his lap, swinging her legs and carefully inspecting every inch of his beard.

Steve was worried about Bucky’s silence. He knows Bucky doesn’t want to do anything to appear unfriendly, but he shouldn’t be making himself uncomfortable.

He’s pleasantly surprised to see Bucky smiling. There’s a crowd of kids around him, playing with his hair and there are two little boys on his lap, touching his beard. Bucky is randomly jiggling his lower jaw, making it jump in their fingers. They burst into delighted laughter every time he does it and loudly declare that “This foreigner is funny!”

That’s when one of the older girls standing behind Bucky gives them an unimpressed look. “He’s not just a foreigner! He’s Bucky!”

The younger kids who hadn’t put the pieces together yet all look startled, and the two on Bucky’s lap rear back and stare at him with huge eyes, their fingers frozen in his beard.

Dayo twists around in Steve’s lap with a startled gasp and peers at Bucky.

Bucky keeps smiling. He says: “Yes, my name is Bucky.”

The two boys stare at each other, then back at Bucky, inspecting him closely. One of them frowns. “But you have short hair in the drawings!”

An older boy standing behind Steve scoffs. “He has longer hair in some of the drawings! You didn’t pay attention, stupid!”

“Now, now,” Steve says, turning his head to give the boy a look. “Be nice, Ngozi.”

Ngozi makes a face, but falls silent.

Urbi appears, munching on a piece of fruit and shaking her head at the children. “You didn’t know that’s Steve’s Bucky? You aren’t stupid, but you have the attention of a Kapsa fish!”

That makes the children—and Steve—burst out laughing.

The boys on Bucky’s lap look a little upset that they didn’t recognize him, so Bucky gives their thighs gentle squeezes. “You both know who I am now?”

Steve calls over a translation for the boys. They glance at each other, one of them makes a little head motion that the other seems to understand, then they both nod.

It reminds Steve a lot of how he and Bucky used to secretly communicate when they were younger.

Bucky grins. “Do you two have a secret language?”

Steve translates.

The boys smile shyly and nod.

“Well, Steve and I used to have a secret language too. Steve used to get sick all the time when we were playing games with other kids. We used our secret language so I could make an excuse to stop the game if Steve wasn’t feeling well.”

Steve translates the story.

The boys on Bucky’s lap are grinning, very happy with this news. “So—so you grew up in the Brook-Lyn village too?”

He nods. “Yes, Brook-Lyn.”

Ngozi pulls his fingers out of Steve’s hair and moves closer to Bucky. “Did you really ride on the big wheel?”

Dayo twists around on Steve’s lap and screams: “Ferris wheel!” at Ngozi.

Urbi makes an exasperated sound. “Oh, not the Ferris wheel again! How many times do we have to talk about this?”

Steve presses his lips together so he doesn’t burst out laughing. He glances at Urbi. “Nobody’s asking you to stay and listen, old woman.”

Urbi glares at him. “Who are you calling an old woman?”

Raising his eyebrows, Steve grins. “Definitely not myself.”

She tries to keep her glare even, but the corners of her lips are tugging up. “I’m leaving. If the children start killing you, ask Akanni for help. I don’t care.”

Wandering away to a nearby house, she knocks on the door, but keeps her body positioned so she’s keeping an eye on the children.

Bucky calls over: “They know what a Ferris wheel is?”

“Oh, they know most things about Brook-Lyn. Now they’re trying to figure out if I’ve been lying to ‘em for two years.”

Bucky smiles at Ngozi. He says: “Yes, Ferris wheel,” in Wakandan, and then adds in English “We used to take the train to Coney Island in the summer time and ride the Ferris wheel and the Cyclone and eat hot dogs.”

Steve translates the story.

The kids all start chattering in excited voices. The story matches what Steve has told them a hundred times.

Having decided that Steve is no longer interesting, Dayo jumps off his lap to go over to Bucky. She jostles for position in the crowd of children until she’s right by his elbow. “Tells us Brook-Lyn stories! But new ones!”

Before Bucky can start, Steve decides they’ve had a very long day already. “We have a village meeting in two days. We’ll tell you lots of Brook-Lyn stories when we’re at the fire. Right now, Bucky’s tired from the long bus trip and we need to rest.” He switches to English. “Buck, I’m calling them off. We’ll coordinate Brook-Lyn stories before the next village meeting.”

Bucky laughs. “Do I have to pronounce it ‘Brook-Lyn’ from now on too?”

“Six months from now, that’s how you’ll naturally be saying it without any help from me.” He goes back to using Wakandan. “Alright, everyone. That’s enough for today. Please step back and Bucky and I will be going home to rest.”

After extricating themselves from the crowd of children, they grab their dinner supplies, say good night to Akanni and Urbi—who has come wandering back now that the children are moving away—and head home.

After showing Bucky how to use the communication stone, Steve leaves him to call T’Challa while he cleans up dinner. Bucky tells the King everything is fine and he’s been given permission to stay in the village. T’Challa is thrilled and reminds them to call him later in the week, then they hang up.

Steve can tell Bucky’s tired, but he says he wants to read the letters.

“Buck, there’s almost two years worth of letters. You can’t read them all in one day.”

“I wanna read at least a few.”

It becomes part of their routine. During the day Steve teaches Bucky all the things he’s learned and Bucky focuses on getting stronger and adjusting to his new surroundings. In the evenings, they curl up together on their bench log by the outdoor fire and they take turns reading parts of Steve’s letters to each other. Sometimes Steve will get his plastic bags of pictures out and find the pictures which correspond to a certain letter so he can show Bucky.

While he’s thrilled to help Steve compose his letters to Natasha and Sam, it’s been a long time since Bucky’s held a pencil and he gets annoyed with himself when he wastes a whole sheet of precious paper trying to turn his shaky scribbles back into legible writing. Bucky used to be very proud of his penmanship and he refuses to help write the letters until he’s back in top form. Until then, he adds in his own commentary and fusses when Steve makes a spelling mistake or forget an important detail.

When Bucky’s got his confidence back, he and Steve takes turns writing, adding in their own opinions and thoughts about things. Steve creates any sketches he wants to include and Bucky carefully labels them on the back.

*             *             *

They’re walking back to their house following a post-meeting dinner; their bellies full of food and their heads full of news and good stories.

Steve glances at Bucky as they walk. “That was a good meeting, huh?”

A family walking in front of them stops at their home and bids them good night. Steve and Bucky give them a wave and tell them to have a good night too.

They keep walking, the crowd around them thinning out as people reach their homes.

“Eating more mango for the next while ain’t a hardship, that’s for sure.”

Steve smiles and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I knew you’d find that one tough.”

“Good night, foreigners!” Urbi calls over her shoulder as she and Akanni veer off towards their own home.

They both shout back: “Good night!”

Reaching over, Bucky and grabs Steve’s hand, swinging their arms as they walk. Soon they’re the only ones left, walking towards the river and their little home.

“Oh, Rogers?”

“Hmm?” Steve pushes open the door and steps inside, Bucky on his heels.

“I was doing some thinking.”

Steve takes off his shirt and drapes it on a stump stool. He leans over the bucket of water in the corner, washes his hands and face and finger combes his beard to get little bits of food out of it. “Aww, did ya hurt yourself while doing it?”

There’s a snort and then he sees a shirt flying towards him. Steve grabs it midair and throws it back, his other hand reaching for his comb. “Jesus, I love those kids to death, but why are they all obsessed with braiding our hair, huh?”

Bucky glares at him. “You ain’t paying attention to me.”

Throwing a smirk over his shoulder, he finishes combing his hair and then grabs Bucky around the waist and gently rolls them onto the bed.

He straddles Bucky and plants his arms on either side of his head, grinning down at him. “It’s physically impossible for me to pay more attention to you now. Go ahead, Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky runs his hands up and down Steve’s thighs. “It ain’t today’s technology or today’s customs that made you like being here.”

Steve frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember you told me that’s why you like being out here? You thought not having to deal with modern technology or modern life is what made you feel relaxed and happy?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. It ain’t the same for you?”

“I ain’t talking about me. I’m talking about you, and how that’s all baloney.”

“What? That ain’t baloney.”

“Yeah, it is. I thought it was when you said it that first time, but I thought I’d keep my mouth shut and see for myself. Now I know for sure.”

Steve frowns and climbs off Bucky, sitting up next to him. “I told you, it ain’t baloney. I really do feel better being out here.”

“I know you do. But the reasons behind it ain’t the lack of technology. You’re a smart fella, Stevie. If somebody had showed you how to use today’s technology in a kind, slow way from the time you came out of the ice, it wouldn’t have ever been such a huge thing. But nobody did. Just like nobody really taught you how to fit into modern life back in the States, or even in the city here. They just threw you out there with no help, no support, no family. Nothing.”

Steve doesn’t reply.

Bucky reaches over and gently squeezes Steve’s hand. “Out here, you’ve had help and support from the first day they let you stay, didn’t you? They taught you things, they let you move at your own pace and they never judged you when you messed up.” He gently rubs Steve’s knuckles.

“Then there’s the whole other thing: you found a family out here, Stevie. You spent your whole life living with me and your ma constantly around you. We were constantly in your business, you were constantly in ours and we never had expensive gadgets to take up our time. We spent time together. We laughed, we told stories, we argued, we made plans—we spent a lot of time together. And a lot of times it wasn’t just the three of us, was it? You were surrounded by people who liked you and liked spending time with you—the people we went to school with, your neighbors, my sisters and my parents, the people you worked for. You were part of a huge tight-knit community. And nobody gave you that when you came out of the ice. Not until you came here.”

Steve is staring at the far wall, lost in thought.

“I ain’t saying it wasn’t a relief to get away from the weird things modern life has in it, but living here ain’t a ball of familiarity to you. Sure, we didn’t have running water in Brooklyn, but we didn’t build our own homes or fish for our food. I think it’s the family and the community that you found here that made you feel better.”

Steve finally looks down at Bucky. He feels very vulnerable all of a sudden.

Bucky opens his arms. “Come here, punk.” Steve curls up around him and Bucky wraps his arms tightly around his back. They’re quiet for a while.

Lost in thought, Steve traces Bucky’s ribs. “They really are my family, ain’t they? My community? Just like I had in Brooklyn?”

Bucky smiles. “Yep. And I’m real happy that you found that again, Stevie. You did the hard work for me. I just woke up and you had a home and a family and a community all ready to go for me.”

He kisses Steve’s head. “I just hate that you had to spend all those years struggling alone.”

Sighing, Steve snuggles into Bucky’s chest. “You know what? I think maybe the struggling was important for me. I think I took my life in Brooklyn for granted. I didn’t even figure out what it was I was missing. I don’t remember feeling as happy back then as I do these days.”

“I think it’s cause you _are_ happier today than you were back then. Now that you know what’s it’s like not to have these things, they’re even more precious to you.”

Steve is quiet a while longer. Then he props himself up and stares down at Bucky. “What about you, Buck? Do you like it out here?”

Bucky smiles. “First of all, where ever you are, that’s home to me. That’s been my truth since the day I met you, and that ain’t changing. But yeah, I like it here. These are good people and it really does feel like being back home. But it ain’t got nothing to do with the fact that they ain’t got the internet out here.”

Steve laughs. “I guess I was a bit of a nitwit, huh?”

Pulling Steve back into his arms, Bucky smirks at him. “That’s why you got me, Rogers. One of us needs to be the brains of this operation and obviously I can’t trust you with that.”

Anybody walking past their home would have heard loud laughter, and a thump from somebody being pushed off the bed and onto the dirt floor.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it, folks! The final chapter. I want to thank all the wonderful people who have come on this journey with me. A special thanks those of you who have taken the time to comment along the way, especially the individuals who take the time to write lovely reviews every week. Every comment I receive means the world to me and it gives me the inspiration to create more stories for you. Thank you, and please enjoy!
> 
> I want to thank the amazing [Kawherp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawherp/pseuds/kawherp) for being a fantastic beta reader and letting me bounce ideas off her while I was working on this story. It's a thousand times better because of her help.

*             *             *

_Six Months Later_

*             *             *

Steve smoothly slides his boat up the river bank in the docking area, right next to Akanni’s boat. Hopping out, he ties up the boat and hauls out his net.

When he looks up, he sees a small crowd walking over, everybody coming to help bring the days catch back to the village. He sees Bucky immediately.

He’s walking and chatting with one of the village council members as they walk, having an animated conversation that seems to be centered on chopping something, if their hand motions are accurate.

As Bucky gets closer, he stops talking and smiles at Steve.

“Hi!” He shoves the empty baskets at Steve. “Did you know his Majesty’s coming to visit on market day?”

“What? Really? His Majesty’s coming?” Steve hands Bucky the net and fills the baskets with his fish.

“Yes,” Bucky says in Wakandan. “He was going to just meet with all the village councils, but wants to see market day.”

When Steve’s done sorting his catch into the two baskets, he secures his paddle, grabs his spear and one basket, and walks up the river bank. “That’s going to be a fun day!”

Bucky slings the net over his shoulder, grabs the other basket and follows Steve. He nods. “Oh, yes. How was your day? Good catch?”

“It was a very, very good day. I got lots of Kapsa.”

Bucky smacks his lips together. “Excellent! I’m drooling already.”

Steve laughs. “I knew you would be. I got them just for you.”

They make it to their house and Steve hangs up the fishing net on the wooden spikes outside their door. While Bucky takes one of the buckets up to where village council is gathering today’s contributions, Steve gets the fire going.

When he gets back, Bucky cuts up some fruit and gets the fish cooking while Steve gets their dishes ready and inspects the net. “It’s not too bad today. Just a few fixes.”

“We’ll do it after dinner,” Bucky says, turning the fish over and poking at the fire.

Steve grabs a piece of fruit and goes to sit on the log bench beside the open door. The sun is slowly starting to sink behind the canopy and soon the sky will be lit up in beautiful yellows and reds. He slowly munches on his fruit while Bucky cooks.

When dinner’s ready, Bucky hands Steve his plate and a mug of water and they eat in comfortable silence, sitting on the bench next to each other and looking at the river and the disappearing sun.

They chat about their day. Bucky has recently started learning how to fish, and he and Steve alternate going fishing and staying in the village. Whoever’s not fishing is responsible for maintaining the house, chopping fire wood, gathering fruits and other things from the forest and helping out around the village. Steve likes the variety.

He sips his water and stares down at the mug in his hands. “I still hate that you’re better at pottery than me.”

Bucky laughs. He switches to English when he replies. He stopped wearing the translation device a month ago. “Punk. Don’t be silly. I can’t sew worth a damn and you don’t see me glaring at my clothes, all jealous.”

Steve switches to English too. “I ain’t jealous.”

“Uh huh. Liar.”

Steve elbows him in the side and reaches over to steal the fish head off Bucky’s plate. He sticks it in his mouth and starts chewing before Bucky can try to get it back.

“Hey! Thief!”

“What’re you gonna do about it?”

Bucky mock-glares at him. “Oh, you’ll see. When we’re done for the day, I’ll show you what happens to thieves.”

Steve grins, which makes Bucky try harder at looking threatening. But the corners of Bucky’s lips are curling up as he struggles to keep from laughing, so the effect is ruined. “Don’t be grinning when I’m telling you I’m gonna punish you, Rogers.”

Chuckling, Steve pries some small fish bones out from between his teeth with his tongue. “I’d apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it. So…”

That earns him a smack over the head. “Wise cracker.”

Still chuckling, Steve drains his water. “We gonna call Nat tonight?”

“Yup. Let’s wash dishes and then we’ll talk to her while we work on the net. When is she coming again?”

Steve turns around and squints into their house at the wooden calendar. “Four days.”

“Oh, good. We can smoke and dry some Kapsa for her before she gets here. How long is she staying?”

It’s the first time that Natasha is visiting since Bucky has arrived in the village.

“A week.”

Bucky’s eyes light up. “She’s gonna be here for market day too! We’ll get to see both her and T’Challa at the same time.”

Steve chuckles. “We both know T’Challa would prefer that we all met in his nice, clean palace.”

“We’ll give him our cleanest stump stool to sit on.”

Steve laughs. “Don’t worry about that. Obasi will get everything ready for him. T’Challa will get a brand new stool to sit on, brand new skewers to use—only the best and newest.”

“And he’ll still spend the whole time wishing he were back in his palace.”

“Probably. But you won’t know it from looking at him. You’ve never seen him when he’s being all ‘Kingly’. He’s fantastic.”

Steve gets up to grab a handful of dried insects for dessert. He comes back out of the house, drops down on the log beside Bucky and hands him half the bugs.

Bucky licks the remains of dinner off his fingers and reaches for his portion of bugs. He’s still fascinated enough by the idea of eating them that he spends time carefully studying each one before they make their way into his mouth. He tosses one of the bugs into his mouth and then elbows Steve. “Hey?”

“Yeah?”

Bucky looks around carefully and when he sees there’s nobody else around, he turns Steve’s face and gives him a soft kiss. “Thank you for getting me lots of Kapsa today.”

Steve smiles. “You’re welcome, jerk.”

“Oh! Before I forget. I have more gossip to share.”

Steve chuckles, chewing his mouthful of bugs. “You spent time with Taiwo today, didn’t you?”

Bucky grins. “What else are we supposed to do when we spend the whole day shelling Osi nuts? Anyway, listen to my gossip.”

“Okay, I’m listening.” Steve gets up, dusts bits of wings off his hands and brings over the drying fishing net.

Bucky goes into the house and brings out two fish bone needles and twine. He hands Steve a needle and twine and gets his own threaded. “So according to Taiwo, Ebun has been—”

“Which Ebun? Over there?” Steve points down the river to his left with his needle.

“No, other one.” Bucky points down the river to his right.

“Oh, okay. What about her?”

“You remember she took in the twins about a year ago?”

Steve nods, running his hands over the net and finding a tear that needs patching. “I remember. Those poor kids.”

The twins’ mother had died from an illness when the girls had been very young, and their father had died in an accident about two years ago. He’d fallen from a tree while harvesting Bombu fruit. As was always the case when a child is orphaned, or if a family can’t continue caring for a child, the village’s own council tried to find a suitable home for the two young girls so they could stay in their own village.

In this case, Ebun and her husband had put their names forward and council had allowed them to take the twins in. They already had two other children of their own, but nobody else in their village had the resources to take in both girls and everybody wanted to keep them together.

Bucky pulls the other end of the net onto his lap and goes looking for his own tears to mend. “Her husband hurt his back and he won’t be able to keep fishing. She’s got her hands full with the four kids and things are too hard for them right now. Their village council is helping them as best as they can, but she’s told council she needs to give the twins up.”

“Has anybody else from their village stepped forward?”

“Nope. Taiwo says their council is gonna call a meeting with the other councils in a few days to open up the adoption to the whole area.”

Steve makes a sympathetic face, stitching a large hole in the net closed. “I feel for those poor girls. Losing both parents, and then losing their new family. That’s gotta be real hard.”

“Uh huh. And I was thinking that they really deserve a permanent family.”

Steve makes an affirmative noise. His heart is aching for those poor kids but now that all the councils are working together, he knows they’ll find a perfect family for them.

He’s concentrating so hard on the tear he’s mending that he doesn’t notice Bucky’s stopped sewing until he feels Bucky staring at him.

He glances at him and sees Bucky staring at him, eyes wide and hands definitely not stitching. “What?”

“What’d you think about us putting our names forward?”

“Huh? Buck, at your sewing rate, we’re gonna be sitting here until tomorrow morning.”

“You ain’t listening to me, Rogers. What do you think about us putting our names forward?”

Steve gives him an unimpressed look. “Barnes, those poor kids have been through enough. Don’t be a jerk and make fun of their situation.”

That seems to piss Bucky off. “I ain’t making fun of their situation, Rogers! I was serious.”

Now Steve is really confused. “About what?”

Bucky sighs and looks skyward like dealing with Steve is a task that’s too much for him. “Jesus Christ. Mrs. R, where did we go wrong?” He gives Steve an unimpressed look. When he replies, he says every word way too slowly like Steve is too stupid to understand him otherwise. “What do you think about us being parents?”

The needle freezes in Steve’s hand. “I—I’ve—Buck, honestly, I’ve never really thought about it. I mean, I have—but in an abstract kind of way. I’ve never actually thought about it really happening.”

“Well, can you spend a few minutes thinking about it really happening?”

Steve stares at him. The first thought in his mind is ‘yes, yes, yes’ and he wants to run over to Ebun’s village, gather those little girls into his arms and never let them go—but his brain keeps telling him to be realistic.

“Buck, are you seriously asking me if I want to raise kids with you?”

“Yeah. I am. I’m asking you if you wanna be a parent, and if you wanna be a parent with me.”

“You—Jesus, Buck, I’m usually the one who’s running headfirst into things without thinking.”

Bucky frowns. “I _am_ thinking. I’ve spent all day thinking about it. I know we could do it. We’ve got the time, the resources, the knowledge, and the experience. We spent years raising Becca ourselves, didn’t we?”

Steve chews on his lip. “That was different.”

“Why?”

“Because this would be a huge commitment. With Becca, if we were really too busy, we could send her back to your house. But this is different. These kids have already lost two families, I ain’t gonna take them in knowing that eventually we’ll be leaving here.”

Bucky’s frown of annoyance changes to confusion. “Where the hell are we going?”

Steve sighs. “Anywhere you want. Look, I ain’t an idiot. I know you’re here because I said I wanted to be here and you had nowhere else to go. But eventually when you think I’m doing well enough, you’ll want to go somewhere else—back to the city, or another country—and of course, we’ll go.”

“You think I’m only here because of you?”

“Of course, Buck.”

Bucky sighs and reaches over to take the sewing supplies and the net out of Steve’s hands. He crouches down in front of Steve and squeezes his thighs. “Stevie, I might have come out here because following you was my best option at the time, but I feel in love with this place just like you did. And I’m falling more in love with it every day.”

“That’s fine. But right now you have the option of leaving whenever you want. The girls are what? About six? That means we’ll be responsible for them for at least 10 years until they get married or longer than that if they want to do something else. 10 years is a long time, Buck.”

“I know. But I know we could do it.”

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hands. “It ain’t about that, Buck. I know we could, but I don’t wanna force you to stay in a place you don’t wanna be in.”

“You’re not. Stevie, you’re not. Honest. I wanna be here. I wanna help those girls and I know I’ll be happy here, with you and the girls. We have a home, we have each other, we have a family, a community. I’m happy here, I really am. And I know you are too.”

Steve gives him a long look. “And there’s another thing. You do know how to count, right?”

Bucky gives him a mock-glare. “Seeing how I taught _you_ how to count, that’s a stupid question.”

“Well, I taught you how to count in Wakandan so we’re even.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know how to count, punk. Why?”

“Twins means two. Two little girls. Right now we have two of everything we need, and now we’re gonna need four of everything. That’s a big change.”

“We can do it. We’ll make a bigger bed, more stools, more dishes and toys. Lots of toys.”

“You mean, _you’ll_ make more dishes.”

Bucky chuckles. “Yeah. I’ll make more dishes. I’ll let you handle the toys.”

He still can’t believe Bucky’s serious about this. “You’re really sure about this?”

Bucky nods. “I really am. But if you ain’t, then it’s off the table. I won’t be mad.”

Staring at their little house behind him, Steve imagines what it would look like with two little girls running around, playing with their toys and demanding bugs after dinner.

The thought fills him with a happy glow.

Those two kids deserve to have a family that will love them and care for them forever.

Steve knows what it’s like not having that. And that’s not a position he wants to leave two little kids in.

He stares at Bucky. “Alright, let’s do it.”

Bucky grins, his eyes sparkling. “Really?”

“Really. Let’s go talk to Obasi. Actually, before we go, we have to make a solid plan. You know he’ll ask for a solid plan. I think we can leave the bed until Nat gets here. She can cook and help out with other things while we work on the—”

Bucky leans up, grabs Steve’s chin and gives him a kiss. “Thank you, Stevie. I know having the girls around will make you even happier than you are now.”

Steve grins and wraps his arms around Bucky. “I know.”

“We’ll make awesome parents,” Bucky mumbles into his shirt.

Steve smiles. “I know that too.”

And that’s the moment when the last piece of Steve’s soul slides into place and he knows with absolute certainty that he’s finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story! Comments mean the world to me so I would be very happy to hear what you thought of the story!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [If Light is in Your Heart, You Will Find the Way Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387876) by [emeraldsage85](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldsage85/pseuds/emeraldsage85)




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